[Taxacom] amazon and permissions: dismal future?

Tue Apr 29 17:28:30 CDT 2008

Dear Michael,

I understand your point of view, and if anyone has a right to be frustrated and angry and cynical about all this, I am, because I haven't given up on Brazil after all these years.  The work I do in collaboration with the Universidade Federal do Acre pushes many of the hot buttons that concern the Brazilian government:  Amazon, frontier region, national parks, collecting specimens.  No matter that we have obeyed the spirit and the ltter of the law without fail for 20 years, and that our collaboration is considered to be a model of international cooperation by Brazil's national science foundation, it is still excruciatingly slow to obtain approval for the renewal of the relationship, the new work plan, and the research visas for participating outsiders.

I would like to think that I am too dedicated (as opposed to too foolish) to stop trying to conduct collaborative research in Amazonian Brazil.  I have to tell you that unless and until there are radical changes in legislation, I will never send a non-Brazilian graduate student to do a thesis project there, because of the legal uncertainties and open-ended delays.  On the other hand, if there ever was a time that our Brazilian colleagues needed us to hang in there, it is now.  I am not talking about the same (handful of) difficult people from the 70s to whom you referred.  We and the vast majority of the Brazilian scientific community are on the same side, and they too are victims of the regulatory overkill that is strangling research in several megadiverse countries.  While we cannot interfere in the debates or the legal processes, we do owe our Brazilian colleagues as much moral, intellectual, and programmatic support as we can provide while they struggle to secure for biodiversity research in Brazil the trust, respect, and support it deserves.

Douglas Daly

________________________________

From: Michael A. Ivie [mailto:mivie at montana.edu]
Sent: Mon 4/28/2008 6:00 PM
To: Daly, Doug
Cc: Donat Agosti; taxacom
Subject: Re: [Taxacom] amazon and permissions: dismal future?

Ah, let it go.  Why do you want to work where you aren't wanted anyway? 
Its a big world, with lots of underworked places that welcome foreign
scientists.  Brazil's scientific community started this whole
nationalistic-isolationist mindset against foreign systematists 30 years
ago, and now they get to live with it. The rest of us should simply turn
our attentions elsewhere.  Believe me, these politicians are not going
to change from listening to a bunch of foreigners who want access to
their riches.  In fact, the number of people who have been willing to
jump through the ridiculous hoops already in place only serves to
strengthen the idea that there is something really valuable there that
(we) want.  Otherwise, why would we bother?

I suggest that if the boycott that was proposed in the 1970's would have
happened when this all started, i.e. don't work there, don't put
international meeting there, don't invite colleagues from there, don't
answer invitations, don't send reprints, etc, this would have all dried
up in about 18 months.  Instead, the chickens come home to roost.

I have good friends/colleagues in Brazil, and would love to work there,
and don't want to see them cut off, but it is the Brazilian people's
country, and they can look stupid and rape the place if they want to. 
If not, they are the only ones who can change the situation, not a bunch
of what looks to the Brazilians as self-serving busy bodies.  So, in the
meantime, find a better place to work, one where you are appreciated by
everyone concerned.

Daly, Doug wrote:

>This measure would/will add yet another bureaucratic hurdle (and more time) required to obtain permission to conduct research in the Brazilian Amazon.  The sad irony is that foreigners already have to meet various requirements and obtain various special permissions for this purpose, especially if they intend to collect specimens, and with so many safeguards already in place, any additional requirements are really unnecessary.  Crimes against Brazil's patrimony and biodiversity will be thwarted by more enforcement of existing legislation, not by more legislation.
>Partly as a result of this daunting process, research on some key aspects of Amazonian biodiversity in Brazil is slowing to a crawl, at the same time that deforestation is reaching unprecedented levels.  The Brazilian scientific community has been protesting the burdens, limitations, and stigmas placed on biological research, and it is hoped that a unified voice of reason from them is heard.  This is a very discouraging situation, and one that is likely to result in less protection for Brazil's biological diversity.
>
>Douglas C. Daly, Ph.D.
>
>Director, Institute of Systematic Botany;
>
>B. A. Krukoff Curator of Amazonian Botany
>
>The New York Botanical Garden
>
>            tel.        718-817-8660
>
>            fax        718-817-8648
>
>            e-mail   ddaly at nybg.org
>
>
>
>
>
>
>-----Original Message-----
>From: taxacom-bounces at mailman.nhm.ku.edu [mailto:taxacom-bounces at mailman.nhm.ku.edu] On Behalf Of Donat Agosti
>Sent: Monday, April 28, 2008 2:54 PM
>To: 'taxacom'
>Subject: [Taxacom] amazon and permissions: dismal future?
>
>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 <http://antbase.org/> 
>Blog: http://biodivcontext.blogspot.com/
>Skype: agostileu
>CV
>Current Location
>Dalmaziquai 45
>3005 Bern
>Switzerland
>+41-31-351 7152
>+1-202-558 0330
>
>
>
>
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