From the forest to the consumer - GVces - Fundação Getulio Vargas

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the minimum prices,” says Souza. “There is no point in investors offering huge
premiums but having to file for bankruptcy five years later”. That situation does
not benefit the government, he points out, because it can force the entrepreneur
to turn to illegal practices.
State governments also use public forest concessions to promote legal
management. The first state contract will be signed by Pará in 2011 to open
the Mamuru-Arapicus State Forest for
harvesting by private companies. With
Public forest concessions
the concession process, the Pará state
make it possible to
government began to assess its forests.
produce timber in the long
“Until very recently, the state did not
run and avoid land tenure
understand the reality of its forests,”
issues that still hinder
says the director of Pará’s Forest Develo-
many projects
pment Institute, Carlos Augusto Ramos.
Slowly, the Forest Grant Annual Plan
assigns use to land that had no owner. Another initiative, known as Harvest
Plan, determines credit lines and licensing targets for timber production and
job generation. “Previously, financing agents such as the Amazon Bank ignored
the harvest prospects,” says Ramos, adding that the state must reduce uncertainties
about forest production. He points out that the process of land use
planning and control must involve community areas since they occupy 60% of
the Amazon and their production is important to meet the market’s demand.
The state of Amazon chose to follow a similar route. “The focus of our forest
policy is small scale sustainable production, under 500 hectares,” says the
state’s Environment Secretariat advisor Philipe Waldhoff. The secretariat set a
target for 5 thousand small scale management plans – today it already has 700
plans registered. “The challenge is to change the production pattern of small
areas, which usually operate informally and illegally,” he says.
“As a precaution, however, we must balance profit from management
with costs in terms of biodiversity,” says José Maria Cardoso, Conservation