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Brazilians are wont to say: there are laws that catch on and laws that don't. Yet Brazilian legislators do not give up easily. Recently, new law came into effect aimed to stop the use and abuse of the environment. It is a far complex matter, especially in the vast but fragile Amazon rain-forest. Logging, mining and large-scale agriculture have heen important sources of jobs and profit in Brazil for centuries. They remain so for many of the 18m people who live in the nine states which, in whole or part, make the Amazon region. These people are over-represented in the federal Congress. Yet Brazil has a large urban middle class. These is growing national, as well as international, pressure to stop the plunder of the Amazon.
These conflicting interests are reflected in the new law, whose first draft was introduced seven years ago. The law unifies regulations and, for the first time, creates "environmental crimes". Some provisions were watered down after lobbing by ranchers and industrialists, especially clauses that would punish those who order protected trees cut down, not just those who wield the chain saw. Anyway, environmentalists think the law broadly adequate. Those who break it will risk up to four years in jail, and the denial of federal contracts.
The law covers many environmental issues, but the real test will be in the Amazon. Only days before the law was at last passed, the government released figures derived from an analysis of satellite images which show that the rain forest continues to shrink steadily. The trend remains worrying. In the 1970th and 1980th, Brazil's then military government encouraged deforestation through road-building, turning forest into cattle ranches, and large-scale settlement projects.
Such schemes have been scrapped- yet trees are still being cut down. Environmentalists see loggers as the main culprits. Having chopped down almost all of the forest along Brazil's east cost, they have moved into the Amazon, have been joined there by Malaysian play wood firms. They are penetrating even deeper into the forest. Punishment is not an effective solution to a social problem. Official policy is aimed at steering farmers to already deforested areas, while exercising closer control over logging. In February, 1998, the government approved the creation of seven new "national forests" within the Amazon region.
Critics doubt that the government has enough people and resources.to the new law. It will need to be backed up by complementary efforts branches of government, if 18 m people are to coexist peacefully
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to make a dent - have an impact, a small difference
trendy — in fashion at the moment, in value
in their own world - self-absorbed, concerned with only themselves
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