Governance and Laws of Mountains - Impact of Global Changes on Mountains: Responses and Adaptation - page 171

whose purpose is to preserve the natural environment with the least possible
human intervention, such as national parks, ecological stations, biological
reserves, natural monuments and wildlife refuges, and b) sustainable-use
units, intended to make the conservation of nature compatible with the
sustainable use of some of its natural resources, such as extractive reserves,
sustainable-development reserves, environmental protection areas, areas
of signifi cant ecological interest, fauna reserves, natural forests and private
natural-heritage reserves. Yet it is impossible to turn all areas containing
hills, mounts, mountains and ranges into conservation units or some other
category of protected areas. What other legal solutions might be possible?
The intrinsic link between protection of mountains and property rights
refers us to the social function of property, which provides substance
to those rights along with broad and binding administrative limits on
their exercise. Law 4771/1965, known as the Forest Code, provides for
'permanent protection areas' (APPs), which place administrative constraints
on property rights by setting aside plant cover that cannot be removed
or suffer any type of intervention and whose environmental function is
to preserve natural resources and to ensure population's well-being. The
original purpose of the APPs was to protect the soil and water (Silva et
al. 2010), but more recently it was realized that APPs also perform other
environmental services, particularly for the conservation of biodiversity. To
promote the welfare of residents and protect the soil—which, depending on
the slope, has a greater tendency to slide down the sides and tops of hills,
mounts, mountains and ranges—the Forest Code provides that hillsides
steeper than 45º and the tops of these geological formations are all APPs, as
well as the slopes coming down plateaus and mesas. In areas with slopes
between 25º and 45º, the only possible activity is extraction of logs.
The importance of these APPs is readily perceived: conservation
of biodiversity, enhancement of soil fertility, the maintenance of micro-
climates and water production, as well as the safety of human communities
threatened by landslides, most of which are caused by the removal of
plant cover in APPs on the sides and tops of mounts, hills, mountains
and ranges. This danger rises during the summer rainy season, often to
catastrophic proportions. Climate change caused by global warming has
in fact made rainstorms more intense and frequent. Protecting mountains
is thus fundamental as one of the strategies to prevent disasters and help
adapt to the impacts of climate change.
The Forest Code, however, has come under the attack from powerful
interest groups, particularly representatives of agribusiness. Their heavy
campaign to alter the standard of excellence for protection of forests and
other forms of plant cover, including ecosystems on hill and mountain
tops and on the sides of plateaus and mesas, culminated in the approval
in May 2011 by the House of Representatives of Bill 1876/1999, which