Subject: Greenpeace Launches Global Campaign to Save Amazon
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5/31/99
OVERVIEW & COMMENTARY by EE
Greenpeace is re-energizing its Amazon campaign, realizing that the 
type of corporate plundering of rainforests playing itself out around 
the World is heading squarely to the Amazon.  Let's hope that 
Greenpeace finds a niche, which complements existing efforts, while 
bringing their brand of radicalism into the mix.  There is clearly a 
monumental campaign here--using the resources of one of the largest 
environmental groups to emphasize, in a straight up no holds barred 
manner, the importance of continuation of the Amazon's ecosystem 
functionality for planetary survival.
g.b.

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Title:   Greenpeace launches global campaign to save Amazon
Source:  Reuters 
Status:  Copyright 1999, contact source for permission to reprint 
Date:    May 31, 1999 
                                                                   
RIO DE JANEIRO, Brazil (Reuters) -- International environment group 
Greenpeace launched its largest ever global campaign on Monday to 
combat illegal logging by multinationals and slow the decline of 
Brazil's ancient Amazon rainforest.
          

Logging companies represented the frontline of destruction of the 
Amazon forest, an area the size of Western Europe of which only two 
thirds now remained, Greenpeace said.

"The Amazon is of global importance. If it is destroyed there will be 
climatic changes which will be felt all over the world. To preserve 
the Amazon is a global challenge and 60 percent of it is not yet 
destroyed," said Thilo Bode, executive-director of Greenpeace
International.

With depletion of the forest in southeastern Asia and central Africa, 
the multinational companies were heavily investing in the Amazon as a 
key future source of tropical timber and planned to boost production 
in the next few years.

"For Greenpeace, it is the most important campaign and also the 
largest. If we are successful, we can do something very important for 
the planet. It is certainly the most difficult campaign we have ever 
had," Bode told reporters.

The campaign has an annual direct budget of $2.5 million plus 
fundraising from Greenpeace's 33 offices worldwide. According to 
Greenpeace data, until the early 1970s, 99 percent of the Amazon 
rainforest -- which represents one third of the world's remaining 
tropical forests -- was still intact.

But in the last four years alone, an area the combined size of the 
Netherlands, Belgium and Luxembourg had been lost. In the last three 
decades an area the size of France was lost.

Bode said more than 70 percent of the Amazon's worst deforestation 
areas were linked to logging, adding that 80 percent of Amazon region 
logging activities were illegal and half of the wood exports 
uncontrolled.

"Virtually zero percent of the activities could be called sustainable, 
so it can be described as causing irreparable damage. We plan to 
expose the activities of these transnational companies," Bode said.

Brazil has often been accused of sacrificing the endangered Amazon, 
the world's largest tropical rainforest sometimes called the "Lungs of 
the Earth," to economic development.

Although it has introduced controls on logging and land clearance 
after a wave of international criticism in the late 1980s, 
environmentalists still say many laws are not complied with and 
federal agencies lack the resources to monitor them.

Greenpeace said a handful of large corporations from Europe, Asia and 
the United States controlled more than 12 percent of the Amazon 
region's timber processing capacity and almost half of its export 
value.

Logging as an industry was also highly wasteful, it said, with two 
thirds of all logged timber ending up as unusable fragments or 
sawdust. Poor processing, even with logging classed as "legal," was 
common and led to enormous wastage.

"Logging is something which is acceptable to us but only under 
restricted conditions. Of all that goes on there, we would probably 
find that only one percent is acceptable," said Roberto Kishinami, 
executive-director of Greenpeace Brasil.

Apart from demanding drastically tightened legislation, the group's 
idea is to be a broker between buyers and sellers of Amazonian wood 
products.

In certain cases, Greenpeace would promote alternative commercial 
areas which would provide the 20 million people living in the region -
- many of whom depend on the forest for economic survival -- with 
sustainable means of income.

This mainly included eco-tourism but also rubber, forest fruits such 
as palm hearts, Brazil nuts and medicinal plants.

"It's not an empty continent we want to protect, we have to find a 
solution which is acceptable to the people living there," said Bode. 
"It's not Antarctica where there are just penguins living there."

"It's a problem of political will and a problem to fight commercial 
interests. Politically, we think the problem can be solved," he said.

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