Brazil's environment minister warned Tuesday that a bill giving settlers title to millions of hectares of land illegally occupied in the Amazon before 2004 would be an "ecological disaster."
"Without environmental guarantees, the message we would be sending the world is that we are giving land titles away with one hand and a chainsaw with the other," Environment Minister Carlos Minc told reporters. "It would be a license to deforest."
The bill before the Brazil's Chamber of Deputies would give a claimant title to up to 1,500 hectares (3,700 acres) of public land if it was occupied before 2004.
The bill includes environmental requirements, such as an obligation to replant deforested areas, but a powerful bloc within the chamber called "ruralists" wants to eliminate them, Minc said.
"That the state would turn over public patrimony to 300,000 families without requiring an environmental counterweight at a time when the whole word is discussing climate issues and the Amazon, would be an ecological disaster of great dimensions," he said.
Minc recalled that in the past year Brazil has set goals for reducing the deforestation of the Amazon and opened an Amazon Fund for international donations to protect the region to which Norway has pledged one billion dollars.
"I think that a signal that the majority of the parliament does not consider the environmental question to be important would bury the Amazon Fund," he said.
Environmentalists also have questioned the bill. Nilo Davila, of Greenpeace, said the measure should be limited to small traditional producers.
Roberto Smeraldi, director of Friends of the Earth, told AFP the measure "privatizes lands already illegally occupied and, as such, would stimulate more illegal occupation."
The government estimates that some 300,000 land titles covering up to 60 million hectares (148 million acres) would be distributed if the bill passes, said Roberto Vincentin, an Environment Ministry official.
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