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25 May 2011 Last updated at 09:50 GMT

Brazil eases rules on conserving Amazon rainforest

Brazil's Chamber of Deputies has voted to ease restrictions on the amount of land farmers must preserve as forest.

The amended law also grants some amnesties for previous deforestation.

Supporters say Brazil needs land to boost agricultural production, while environmentalists say destruction of the Amazon rainforest will increase.

Wrangling over the final bill is likely, as Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff indicated she would veto any bill that contained an amnesty.

After months of at times acrimonious debate, the Chamber of Deputies voted to overhaul the Forest Code, as the legislation is known.


People believe they can deforest illegally because sooner or later all will be forgiven”


Under the current law, 80% of a farm in the Amazon must remain forested; in other areas, the requirement is lower, falling to 20%.

However, in practice, the legislation has not been widely enforced. It is estimated that 20% of the Amazon, the world's biggest rainforest, has been cleared, mainly as a result of logging and farming.

Under the new bill, small-scale landowners, who make up the majority of Brazil's farmers, will be exempt from having to replant deforested land.

Other changes include:

* allowing the use of previously excluded areas such as hilltops and slopes for some kinds of cultivation
* reducing the amount of land that must be left intact along the banks of rivers and streams from 30m (100ft) to 15m (50ft)
* allowing farmers to count forest alongside rivers and lakes on their land as part of their conserved area, so reducing the total amount of land they need to protect or reforest
...


bbc

en dit

Lacking raw material

China has a limited supply of wood fibre. In 1998, it declared a ten year logging moratorium after a series of massive floods exacerbated by destructive logging throughout the nation's forests in the previous decades. China can currently supply only about 28 per cent of the raw material demand of its pulp industry, so imports of pulp are booming. The increasing Chinese demand for wood from other countries adds to the problems of illegal logging and deforestation in Indonesia and Russia and to the unsustainable plantation expansion in countries like Brazil. But instead of taking these problems into account, pulp producers in China are developing large-scale mills before securing a sustainable supply of fibre.

Imports of wood pulp reached 7.2 million tonnes in 2004, mainly coming from Canada, Indonesia, Russia, Brazil and the US. To provide more wood for the growing pulp industry, the Chinese government has ambitious goals to expand the area of industrial tree plantations, with plans to spend a total of US$ 8.65 billion for plantation development between 2002 and 2015, including 5.8 million hectares for the pulp industry [3].
hardwoodfloorsmag