Governance and Laws of Mountains - Impact of Global Changes on Mountains: Responses and Adaptation - page 170

examine Brazilian legislation and prospects for protecting or destroying
hills, mounts, mountains and ranges arising from the bill of law to amend
the Forest Code, soon to be approved by the National Congress.
While there is no cogent (global) international legal instrument to
protect mountains, there is growing concern about ecological issues that
affect them. That concern intensifi ed in the 1990s, when mountains gained
prominence as a global theme (Rudaz 2011).
The emergence of international law on mountains is a relatively recent
phenomenon. In the Agenda 21 'soft law' document adopted in Rio de
Janeiro at the UN Conference on the Environment and Development (Rio
1992), sustainable development for fragile mountain ecosystems received
special attention and management suggestions in Chapter 13. 'Soft law'
refers to non-binding norms which are therefore of limited value, since no
sanctions can be applied if they are disobeyed. Even so, they open the way
to future agreements on policy actions and are also recommendations for
the kind of behavior states should adopt in domestic policies.
In Europe, the Convention on the Protection of the Alps and its
Protocols (protection of nature, agriculture, forests, soil protection, energy,
tourism, transportation and others) make up an international system with
its own bodies (Alpine Conference, Permanent Committee, Compliance
Committee and Permanent Secretariat) and offi cial observers including the
International Commission for the Protection of the Alps, created in 1952
within the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN). Despite
the work done and tools developed to protect mountains—for example
the Alpine network of protected areas—this international system has no
enforceable mechanisms, and instruments for the protection of mountains
must still be harmonized domestically.
Cross-border cooperation to protect mountains has brought nature
reserves into being in border areas between a few countries, such as the
Tumucumaque Mountains National Park (Amapá, Brazil) and the Guiana
Amazon Park (French Guiana, a French overseas territory) which, together,
make up the world's largest protected area in a tropical forest.
Meanwhile, inside Brazil, mountains can be protected by creating
special protection areas, combining conservation units with other sorts of
environmental areas. Conservation units are one of the land-management
categories envisaged by Law 9985/2000, which created the National System
of Nature Conservation Units (SNUC). The units are defi ned as “territory
and its environmental resources, including territorial waters with signifi cant
natural features, legally instituted by public authority with clearly defi ned
limits and conservation objectives, under special administrative rules, to
which appropriate assurances of protection shall be applied.” [Art. 2(I) of
Law 9985/2000]. There are two major groupings of conservation units: a)
wholly protected units, which allow no direct use of natural resources and