India and Brazil - Comparing Environmental Policies in 16 Countries - page 181

not. Once the forests were cut down, the soil proved infertile. The topsoil
was shallow, and without the rain forest, quickly dried out. Flooding was
extensive. At best the Amazonian soil was suitable for grazing cattle.
It supported few crops. Sometimes the forest was not even harvested but
simply burned for grazing.
A further problem was the need for cash by the central government.
Foreign countries would pay cash for the trees, and banks loaned money
to the government that could be repaid by these exports. In the 1970s,
this even included intergovernmental organizations like the World Bank
and the Inter-American Development Bank. Since then these banks have
become aware of their damage and now require better environmental
practices. The rate of destruction has slowed, although it has not stopped.
Furthermore, much of the land did not go to small farmers but to big
corporations. Burning the forest amounted to 25,000 square kilometers a
year. Criticism came from Europe and North America, specifically from
the WWF and the Environmental Defense Fund. At first Sarney lashed
out at the foreign critics, but this was not convincing. Criticism was also
homegrown from the Rubber Tappers National Council, the Union of
Indians, and the Brazilian Association of Anthropologists
Many of the local people suffered from the deforestation as corporations
and large landowners profited. Starting at only nine years old, Chico Mendes
joined his family in tapping the wild rubber trees to collect their latex for
sale, a way of life a hundred years old in the jungle. The rubber tappers
hated the loggers and ranchers who destroyed the forests, and as a young
man Mendes engaged in vandalism to intimidate them. He and his gang
would confront them in the jungle, demanding they stop. With maturity
he adopted legal means, and began to organize a trade union of tappers,
the Xapuri Rural Workers Union. Later he organized a national meeting of
rubber tappers. Tragically, two ranchers assassinated him in 1988.
One sidelight of the debt crisis was the invention of Debt for Nature Swaps
in Brazil, as well as Costa Rica and other countries. Environmentalists
from the North (Europe and North America) proposed exchanging some
of the debt for ecological protection. In return for forgiving some loans,
Brazil would place a certain acreage under protection. For example, a
group like WWF, the Nature Conservancy, or Conservation International
would buy $100 million of debts at a steep discount, perhaps for only
$20 million, then the entire amount of $100 million would be used to pro-
tect a particular natural location, turning it into a park. Although the con-
cept was beguiling, it did not live up to its initial promise. Less-developed