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The Agriculture Law (817191) establishes compulsory reforestation of Legal
Reserve areas whose percentage has gone beyond the limits established by the
Forest Code for each region. In some states (Paranoia and Goes, mainly) the
Public Ministry has made rural landowners reforest the Legal Reserve, in the
proportion of 1/30 a year, as established by law.
Law 9393/96 of the Rural Territory Tax exempts areas with forest cover from
payment of tax property and provides tax reductions for areas with forest
management plans. This stimulated landowners to maintain and preserve forests.
Also in regards to the legislation field it is important to highlight that states are
editing their forest laws. Until now, 12 states have edited them: Minas Gerais
(1991), Rio Grande do Sul (1992), Bahia (1994), Paraíba (1994), Pernambuco (1995),
Rio Grande do Norte (1995), Ceará (1995), Goiás (1995), Paraná (1995), Alagoas
(1996), Santa Catarina (1997) and Acre (2001). But even though there are forest
laws, most of these states are not yet appropriately structured to fulfil their
duties and responsibilities in the forest area – with the exception of Minas Gerais,
Paraná, Rio de Janeiro, Goiás and Acre. These states already have specific
institutions for forest resource management.
Despite legislation having required
forest management for the Amazon
forests since 1965, this practice is
recent in the region. The first
management plans were registered in
the Brazilian Forestry Development
Institute (IBDF – Instituto Brasileiro
de Desenvolvimento Florestal,
predecessor of IBAMA) in 1987. Ten
years later IBAMA had 2808
management plans registered in all 9
states of the Amazon. A first check
revealed that most of these plans
existed only on paper and not in
practice.
IBAMA undertook the tremendous
task of going through all management
plans for the Amazon. In the first
diagnosis, concluded in 1997, IBAMA
cancelled around half of the total of
the plans registered until then and
suspended another 30% for later field
investigation. The work has continued
since then and from 1999 on the
agency has systematically performed
field studies in management plans in
all Amazon through samples.
In 2001, 85 forest engineers were
temporarily hired to carry out field
investigations of management plans
in the Amazon. The report is being
concluded, but extracts from the 2000
reports, shown in Figure 1 and Table
1, demonstrate the management plan
situation in the region.
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