The Brazilian Forest Code is a piece of legislation passed in 1965. There has been controversy over the code, mostly centered on legal requirement for landowners in the Brazilian Amazon to maintain 80% of forests as legal reserves. This particular requirement has never been effectively implemented and implementation has again been delayed by President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva until June 2011.
The original law, passed in 1965, required only 50%. Neither this nor the 80% requirement have ever been prosecuted. This had been expected to change with harsher and criminal penalties to be introduced in 2009. Then President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva however, delayed this until the post election period in 2011, though Presidential Decree number 7029.
While the measure has never been formally adopted into law it has been estimated that other Government policies have reduced logging from 21.5 thousand square kilometers in 2002 to 7.0 thousand in 2009.
The code remains an enduring source of controversy for environmentalists and agriculturalists.
Dilma vetoed 12 parts and made 32 smaller cuts to the rewrite in May 2012.
Further reading
- A Light in the Forest: Brazil's Fight to Save the Amazon and Climate-Change Diplomacy March/April 2013 Foreign Affairs
References
External links
In Portuguese
- Investidas históricas contra o Código Florestal Brasileiro
- O "novo" Código Florestal Brasileiro: conceitos jurÃdicos fundamentais
- A aberração dos quatro módulos fiscais
- contrárias à proposta de alteração do Código Florestal by NGO SOS Florestas
- Principais pontos da proposta do novo Código Florestal 11.May.2011
- Para ONGs, Brasil perde liderança ambiental ao mudar Código Florestal 26.April.2012 BBC Brasil
