Day 239 - 23 Apr 96 - Page 11
1
2 "If the ranchland is swiftly abandoned, the forest will
3 return, but it is typically less biodiverse than the forest
4 which the ranchers cut. If the ranchland is resuscitated
5 before abandonment it will take many years to revert to
6 forest, and that forest is likely to be composed of just
7 one or a few species of trees.
8
9 Deforestation for ranching is also likely to have regional
10 and possibly global effects, both in terms of carbon
11 balance and hydrological cycles.
12
13 A further aspect is the clearance of cerrado forest in
14 states such as Mato Grosso for soya beans, much of which
15 goes to feed cattle in Brazil, the United States and
16 Europe. The cerrado is also highly diverse, and its
17 clearance leads to significant losses of biodiversity.
18
19 Cattle ranching outside the Amazon is the principal reason
20 for the movement of peasants into the Amazon. This is
21 because so much land has been taken over by cattle ranchers
22 elsewhere in Brazil that the forests are the only place
23 available for peasant agriculture. Land concentration in
24 Brazil is extreme, and most of the largest properties take
25 the form of cattle ranches. It is my opinion, as well as
26 that of many environmentalists and some government
27 ministers in Brazil, that the only means of stopping the
28 flow of colonists to the Amazon and the destruction of the
29 forests they cause there is a massive programme of agrarian
30 reform, with ranchland outside the Amazon being
31 redistributed for more productive peasant agriculture.
32
33 G. Social impact: Cattle ranching in the Amazon and
34 elsewhere in Brazil has significant social costs. In many
35 cases, the ranchers, both individual and corporate, have
36 seized their lands without due legal process from weaker
37 and poorer citizens. This is often done through the use of
38 hired gunmen, and every year rural people in Brazil are
39 shot dead as they try to resist the annexation of their
40 lands by ranchers. There are well-documented cases of
41 torture, rape and unlawful imprisonment by ranchers and
42 their gunmen trying to push people off their lands: I have
43 interviewed some of the victims of these abuses. In
44 several cases ranchers have been discovered which have been
45 staffed entirely by manacled slaves. Colonies pushed off
46 their lands by ranchers outside the Amazon are in many
47 cases forced to travel further into the forest, to start a
48 new frontier, causing deforestation."
49
50 MR. JUSTICE BELL: Do the colonists rear cattle?
51 A. Sometimes they do generally, of course, in much
52 smaller holdings than the ranches and what seems to be
53 happening a lot is that there is a status associated with
54 brief production, which means that everybody wants a share
55 in it even if it does not make much sense up there, but
56 what often tends to happen on the frontier is that the
57 colonists will create their smallish clearings, put their
58 cattle on, or try and grow their beans, or rice or
59 whatever, and then the bigger guys, the ranchers, will come
60 in, often with some fairly unpleasant teams of people they
