Day 239 - 23 Apr 96 - Page 20
1 Q. As far as I understand it, the area of Tocantins and Goias?
2 A. Yes.
3
4 Q. Is officially outside the Amazon Legal region. Do you have
5 any comment about that as regards what you were saying
6 before about the area of Amazon?
7 A. I think you are right about Goias, I am not sure about
8 Tocantins, which of course is the new estate in that part
9 of Brazil, and I have a feeling it is certainly discussed
10 in federal documents as if it was part of the Amazon.
11
12 What is very clear there is whatever the legal frontiers
13 say, you can see this drainage pattern all going down into
14 the Amazon, and if I can point you towards the northern
15 part of the map, you can see where the Amazon basin clearly
16 stops because the rivers draining into Guiana and Suriname
17 over what is called the Guiana Shield, are clearly going
18 northwards away from the Amazon. That is clearly not part
19 of the Amazon basin whereas just the other side of the
20 Guiana Shield, the river going down through the green bit,
21 such as the Trombetos and the Rio Paru, are clearly
22 draining into the Amazon and so would be considered as the
23 Amazon basin. I think that is certainly the way it has
24 been understood by the early explorers of the Amazon, that
25 what they were talking about was this vast drainage basin,
26 the biggest drainage basin in the world, which makes the
27 Amazon such a spectacular and extraordinary place.
28
29 Q. Can you say that extends outside the mass Legal region, for
30 example into Goias?
31 A. Yes. You can see ----
32
33 MR. JUSTICE BELL: Do not get too fixed on what the Amazon is.
34 I know the leaflet refers to Amazonia, but essentially it
35 refers to rainforest and I am more interested in what the
36 actual vegetation is than I am of what name is put on it,
37 whether it is Amazonia or part of Mato Grosso or whatever.
38
39 MS. STEEL: Can I just say that it might be thought that this
40 refers to the first of Mr. Monbiot's statement which Mr.
41 Rampton said was entirely irrelevant because if Mr.
42 Monbiot's definition of "Amazon" actually includes some of
43 the areas where McDonald's is getting their beef from, then
44 even by Mr. Rampton's argument ----
45
46 MR. JUSTICE BELL: Mr. Rampton's argument was purely this: On
47 25th July of last year I ruled that you should not have
48 leave to amend to allege direct interference of the
49 rainforest by McDonald's. I gave you leave to amend on the
50 basis of indirect interference, knock-on effect, but not
51 direct interference because I said there was not any
52 evidence in the case to support it nor did you appear to
53 have any reasonable prospect of coming across such
54 evidence. That is the only point that Mr. Rampton is
55 making and that was the basis of what he said.
56
57 I have said, and for all I know I may have been too
58 generous, that you can adduce all the evidence from Mr.
59 Monbiot, and I will sort it out at the end of the day
60 because I would rather hear too much from him than too
