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

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res, as established by law, a participatory and transparent controlling system
that is impervious to the political interference such as that seen in recent
elections in Pará.
The problems with decentralization
“The timber licensing and controlling systems have not kept up with the
pace of recent progress in environmental regulation and management legislation
which in turn, can be difficult to interpret,” says Marcus Biazatti, a researcher
with the Amazon Conservation
and Sustainable Development Institute.
He surveyed legislation from different
Amazon states and identified various
shortcomings, as well as possible solutions
for improving forest management.
The Global Green Growth Institute, an
international organization that develops
low carbon projects in Brazil, supported
the study. “It’s almost as though legislation in different states use different languages,”
says Biazatti. “There are loopholes that may result in operations that
feed illegal schemes”. Good management plans are left in the same queue as
bad and illegal ones, and all of them are prisoner to the same sluggish pace of
administrative processes. “There is a lack of standards so the analysis often depends
on the common sense and goodwill of the official doing it,” says Biazatti.
Observers associated with NGOs say that better auditing mechanisms, frequent
on-site inspections and standardized data are needed to effectively monitor
timber flows. One problem is that different regions use different names
for the same tree species. However, the most acute problem is the failure by
DOF to update reports on the commercialization of timber produced in different
states. Because they do not have access to data pertaining to their region,
inspectors are unable to statistically monitor production and are forced to visit
lack of integration
between different
electronic controlling
systems used by the
states creates loopholes
for illegal and predatory
action in the Amazon
Forest