An interesting story in the UK Guardian about a new controversal law on land rights, environment and social justice in Brazil. (ed)
Brazil’s president Lula has approved a controversial law which grants land rights to squatters occupying land in the Amazon — campaigners fear it will result in a further increase in deforestation of the Amazon region…
…Marcelo Furtado, Greenpeace’s campaigns manager in Brazil, said the approval of the law showed that Brazil’s policy on global warming was contradictory: “On one hand Brazil is setting targets for the reduction of carbon emissions and on the other it is opening up more areas for deforestation.“…
…Furtado said the law – originally intended to benefit impoverished farmers in the Amazon – had been “hacked apart by the agricultural lobby” and now benefited wealthy farmers rather than smaller landholders. The result, he said, was “a law which will not help increase governance [or] social justice but which simply raises the risk of more deforestation.“…
Read this article in full at the Guardian
Schumacher College is running the course Earth Jurisprudence and Community Resilience: Learning from Africa in September 2009. For more information click here.
