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The survival of the Brazilian savannah is decided in the offices of Brussels

2022-12-04T11:08:18.866Z


Legislation being prepared by the EU to curb deforestation caused by imported products could leave out highly threatened biomes that do not fall into the strict category of forests, such as the Cerrado, the tropical savannah of Brazil


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Brazilian Indian Hiparidi Top'tiro's grandfather used to tell him a thousand stories about a feared jaguar that prowled his village, but that majestic feline is getting closer to the realm of legend.

“If this continues like this, my grandchildren will have to see it in a little book or go to the zoo,” laments this environmental leader from the villages of the Sangradouro indigenous land, a piece of land besieged by the immense soybean plantations of the Brazilian state of Mato Grosso.

Hiparidi is an indigenous Xavante, one of the dozens of ethnic groups that inhabit El Cerrado, the great (and unknown) Brazilian savannah, whose future is at stake these days thousands of kilometers away, in the gray offices of Brussels.

The European Union (EU) is about to approve legislation to try to stop deforestation caused by the products it imports and that could leave biomes that do not fall within the strict classification of what a forest is unprotected.

For El Cerrado, that would be a death sentence.

When thinking of deforestation in Brazil, one almost automatically thinks of the Amazon, but the bulk of the deforestation caused indirectly by Europe in this country occurs in El Cerrado.

It is here that most of the soybeans are planted, which will later feed millions of European pigs, cows or chickens.

The context of increased international demand for grains makes the pressure of deforestation increase even more if possible.

The loss of native Cerrado went from 6,319 square kilometers in 2019 to 8,531 in 2021, which is equivalent to more than 14 times the city of Madrid.

China and the EU, as the main destinations for

Brazilian

commodity exports, are the main culprits for this destruction.

At first glance, the Cerrado is not as 'sexy' as its big sister, the Amazon;

here there are no lush, bright green forests or rivers like seas, but scattered trees and shrubs, but the eye is deceiving: this savannah is home to 5% of the world's biodiversity, 12,000 species of plants, many of them endemic.

In addition, eight of the 12 main rivers in Brazil are born here, so preserving their springs is key to ensuring water for the entire country.

“Being indigenous in El Cerrado is difficult.

The Amazon is always more famous, and of course it is important, because it is the lungs of the world, but here there are peoples threatened, who are losing their languages ​​and their culture”, laments Hiparidi, who works as an activist in the Rede Cerrado.

Conflicts over land use, the main vector of violence in the countryside, are especially bloody in El Cerrado, where the agricultural sector has enormous power and large estates are sometimes larger than some European countries.

The growing awareness of consumers in the world for the deforestation caused by buying according to what things and according to what countries in the supermarket led the European Commission to prepare a law that would set limits on the six products that are most often stained with deforestation illegal: timber, cattle, soybeans, palm oil, coffee and cocoa.

The producers of these goods will have to demonstrate that before 2020 there were no forests on their farms.

If not, they will not be able to export to Europe.

The legislation was thought up in the heat of the deforestation rampage of the Jair Bolsonaro years, but it will apply to the whole world, also within the borders of the EU, which has generated some internal reluctance, especially in countries like France and Spain.

The first proposal made by the European Commission took the definition of forest made by the FAO, the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations.

This left out the enormous savannahs of El Cerrado, where the forest areas are not the majority.

Last September, the European Parliament corrected the Commission's draft and included in the text the

other wooded lands

(other arboreal areas), which would protect El Cerrado and other South American biomes beyond the jungle.

It passed with a large majority, but for environmentalists it was only a momentary victory.

Now begins the 'trialogue' phase in which the Commission, the Council (representing the countries) and the European Parliament debate to reach a consensus text.

That is where El Cerrado runs the risk of being left out again.

The EU ambassador to Brazil, Ignacio Ybáñez, explains that the Commission defends that only forests enter because opening the protection umbrella too much could be counterproductive, due to the risk that exporting countries such as Brazil accuse the EU of protectionism.

“The Commission's proposal is already ambitious enough, some limit had to be set, we had to start with something.

This legislation will surely be challenged by many countries in the WTO, so the more legal basis you have the better, and the FAO definition is internationally accepted”, he points out.

What happens is that El Cerrado is a mosaic where the forests are dispersed and mixed with savanna areas and natural fields.

It is almost always difficult to clarify where one begins and the other ends.

For this reason, ecologists fear that if the law only talks about forests and does not explicitly protect

other tree areas

(a concept that is also based on what the FAO says), many Brazilian rural producers will fight in court to try to prove that their farms are located outside the object of the law, in a savannah zone and not a forest one.

In practice, that could make implementing the law impossible, in just the areas where it's most needed.

In the arduous battle for El Cerrado to come under the scope of EU protection, in addition to the expected opposite lobby of the soybean giants, there is a problem of ignorance that even has a cultural root, as explained by the WWF policy manager for deforestation-free supply chains, Jean-François Timmers: "We Europeans associate nature with trees, but most of the impact that Europe causes is not on the Amazon, it is on the Cerrado," he remarks.

Paradoxically, he can also play against the relief that the speech of zero tolerance with the deforestation of the president-elect Lula da Silva has brought about in Europe.

The application of the law could be watered down because Brazil would again be given a vote of confidence.

How Brazil does its homework will "influence" how future legislation will be applied, explains the EU spokesman.

“If Lula approves a soybean moratorium in El Cerrado, for example, European legislation would not be necessary,” he says.

A very probable option is that for now Europe approves protecting forested areas and that a period of two years is given to review the text and include other ecosystems.

Ecologists estimate that in that case the bulk of El Cerrado would become “protected” by 2027 at the earliest, and it may be too late by then.

“If they say that for the moment they protect the jungle and then 'we'll see' with the rest, there will be speculation that it will intensify the destruction of El Cerrado,” laments Timmers.

According to WWF calculations, at the current rate, and without any collaborating paper signed in Brussels, the threatened Brazilian savannah could lose eight million hectares in five years, an area the size of the Czech Republic.

Source: elparis

All news articles on 2022-12-04

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