[Taxacom] amazon and permissions: dismal future?

[Donat Agosti]

Does anybody have more news about this

Amazon could be forbidden to most foreigners
By Marco Sibaja in Brasilia
Sunday, 27 April 2008 
Sixty per cent of Brazil could soon be off-limits to foreigners who don't
have special permission to visit the world's largest tropical wilderness.
Those caught in the Amazon without a permit granted by the Military and
Justice Ministry could face a fine of US$60,000 (£30,000). 
According to the national justice secretary, Romeu Tuma, the aim is to
prevent both foreign "meddling" and illegal activity. It would cover all
activities in the area Brazil considers the "legal Amazon" – including
nature tours, business trips or visits to any cities across two million
square miles. "We want to establish the Amazon as ours," Mr Tuma said. "We
want the world to visit the region. But we want them to tell us when they're
coming and what they're going to do."
Brazil already requires government permission for non-Indians entering
indigenous territories. The new law would extend similar restrictions to
foreigners throughout the Amazon region and reflects suspicions among
conservative politicians and the military that foreign NGOs working to help
Indians and save the rainforest are trying to wrest the Amazon's riches away
from Brazil. Scientists and tour companies believe it will severely restrict
their activities. 
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/amazon-could-be-forbidden-t
o-most-foreigners-816231.html

...........
This seems to be ad odd with the presentation of the New Book Sustaining
Life by the world leading conservation organizations.

SINGAPORE, April 23, 2008 (ENS) - New new cancer treatments, new
painkillers, a new generation of antibiotics, new treatments for HIV,
thinning bones, kidney failure, and macular degeneration - even ways to
regrow limbs - may all be lost unless the present alarming rate of
biodiversity loss is halted, according to a new book containing the work of
more than 100 experts.

The core of the book explores seven threatened groups of organisms valuable
to medicine, including amphibians, bears, cone snails, sharks, nonhuman
primates, gymnosperm trees such as pines and spruces, and horseshoe crabs.
It illustrates what is lost to human health when species go extinct.

But the authors stress that the book's conclusions should not be used as a
license to harvest wildlife in a way that puts further pressure on already
threatened, vulnerable and endangered species. Instead they should be a spur
for greater conservation and improved management of species and the
ecosystems they inhabit.

The book, "Sustaining Life," is published by Oxford University Press, and
has been supported by the UN Environment Programme, UNEP; the Secretariat of
the Convention on Biological Diversity; the UN Development Programme; and
the International Union for the Conservation of Nature, IUCN.

The findings, announced today during the Business for the Environment Summit
in Singapore, come in advance of the next meeting of the parties to the
Convention on Biological Diversity set for Bonn, Germany in May. There,
delegates from nearly 190 countries as well as business, scientific and NGO
leaders will seek to accelerate actions that will cut the rate of loss of
biodiversity by 2010.
http://www.ens-newswire.com/ens/apr2008/2008-04-23-01.asp

.............
But obviously, Brazil is reading the message very differently (and so do
many other countries): It is not the species and cures that slip a way, but
the dollars if we are not very careful to prevent biopiracy. And for that,
it seems to bring in even one more actor: the military.

Unfortunately, the message that has often been used since the early
nineties, that in the rainforests is a huge potential for new drugs, alerted
legislator, but since our leaders missed out to fathom the details of such
claims, its consequences and didn't do the groundwork in many tedious
meetings to separate the issue of scientific vs commercial activity, we
taxonomists pay dearly and with that the discovery of the still rather
little known diversity of those biodiversity rich ecoystems.


Donat






Dr. Donat Agosti
Science Consultant
Research Associate, American Museum of Natural History and Naturmuseum der
Burgergemeinde Bern
Email: agosti at amnh.org
Web: http://antbase.org
Blog: http://biodivcontext.blogspot.com/
Skype: agostileu
CV
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