junho, 06 2023

By WWF-Brazil

The launch, this Monday (5), Environment Day, of the new PPCDAm (Action Plan for the Prevention and Control of Deforestation in the Legal Amazon) is an important step to face the destruction scenario left by the government of Jair Bolsonaro in the last four years. To prevent the Amazon from reaching a tipping point, and the irreversible damage this could mean for the forest and for the entire world, however, there is a need for urgency in implementing the plan.

The new PPCDAm reinforces the Federal Government's commitment to zero deforestation and combating the climate and biodiversity crises, as it establishes concrete and ambitious goals and strategies; and with democracy, since it was built on the basis of dialogue and proposals from society.
Among the highlights are:

• actions to strengthen inspection and accountability of offenders, with the regulation of remote embargo of areas hit by illegal deforestation, forest exploitation, and use of fire in Indigenous Lands and other public lands in the Legal Amazon;
• the plan for the allocation of 29.5 million hectares of public forests that have not yet been designated, a fundamental action in the fight against land grabbing and illegal deforestation;
• the creation of 3 million hectares of protected areas and advance in the land title regularisation of 40% of the federal protected areas;
• the development of a traceability mechanism for agricultural commodities, essential to ensure environmental legality and production without violating human rights.

WWF-Brazil also celebrates the creation of the Teixeira National Park, in Paraíba state, and the expansion of the Chocoare-Mato Grosso Extractive Reserve, on the coast of Pará state, fundamental measures for the maintenance of biological diversity and the sustainable use of natural resources in the country .

This Monday's announcements show that the government is aligned with Brazilian society, which mostly showed support for a nature conservation agenda in the last elections, and that it is aligned with the Paris Agreement (to limit global warming) and Kunming -Montreal Agreement (to stop the loss of biodiversity), placing Brazil at the forefront of sustainable development in the international market.

WWF-Brazil now hopes that the new PPCDAm will be urgently implemented, in dialogue with traditional communities and indigenous peoples, and that it will also serve as a basis for the private sector to adopt ambitious targets to curb deforestation.

Finally, it is necessary to highlight the importance of a plan also for the Cerrado, which has registered deforestation and conversion record in recent years and needs strategies and goals to stop the accelerated pace of the destruction of the biome.