Environment: A Dubious Plan for the Amazon

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Among the world's untamed and unexplored regions, there is none richer than the Amazon Basin. For decades, Brazilian governments have sought to protect from foreign exploitation the vast rain forest's gold and minerals, oil and gas, hardwoods and cattle ranges. The great push to settle and industrialize the Amazon has been propelled in part by the government's determination to prevent neighboring countries and multinational corporations from making off with the riches that Brazilians regard as their national patrimony. Despite the precautions, however, the dreaded foreign invasion has finally come. Its name: environmentalism.

For more than a year, the government of President Jose Sarney has been under relentless attack from environmental activists worldwide. They charge that its policies are not only resulting in the wanton destruction of Brazil's forest, its wildlife and its native peoples, but are also endangering the world environment. Scientists say the fires set by ranchers and homesteaders in the Amazon region are spewing into the atmosphere 7% of the carbon dioxide responsible for the global warming process known as the greenhouse effect.

Last week the Brazilian government sought to quell the outcry with an ambitious new environmental program. The plan, titled Our Nature, was announced by Sarney during a full-dress ceremony at Brasilia's Planalto Palace. To a chorus of applause from Brazil's top military brass and nine state governors, Sarney outlined a program that would be set into motion by 35 new decrees and proposed laws. Among other things, the plan calls for:

-- Establishing a five-year, $100 million program to zone the Amazon region for agriculture, mining and other uses. The zoning scheme would be partly financed by the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization.

-- Suspending, temporarily, raw-timber exports and tax incentives long awarded to Amazon cattle ranchers.

-- Regulating the production and sale of the toxic chemicals used in mining and agriculture.

-- Creating 7 million acres of new national parkland.

-- Studying a possible expansion of the areas set aside for the use of Brazil's 220,000 remaining native people.

In outlining the proposal, which will cost $350 million in its first two years, Sarney angrily denounced what he called the "unjust, defamatory, cruel and indecent" international campaign against Brazil. He defended his government's environmental record and denounced the "alarmist" tone of its ecological critics. He insisted that just 5% of the Amazon has been deforested; the more widely accepted figure is 12%.

Sarney framed the issue as a battle between developed and developing nations. It is the rich countries, he claimed, that create most of the industrial waste, acid rain and carbon dioxide that pollute the atmosphere. "We will not accept tutelage," the President declared. "We will accept responsibility for the defense of our territory." Sarney reiterated his rejection of so-called debt-for-nature swaps, in which foreign debt is forgiven in exchange for conservation efforts, as just one more way for those who covet the Amazon to meddle in Brazil's affairs.