Discussion event on forest policy and the realities of environmental protection in Brazil and Finland

Maan ystävät (Friends of the Earth Finland) organizes an open discussion event on the possibilities of forest protection, the functionality of emissions trading, forest policy and the climate debt. The discussion will create a dialogue between the forest policy of Brazil, Finland, the EU and how ruling policies are creating realities of environmental protection. In the discussion Júlio Barbosa, the president of CNS (Conselho Nacional das Populações Extrativistas) and Juan Carlos Carrasco Rueda will tell on the possibilities of forest protection through community forests of the Brazilian Amazon. Event guests from Brazil have a long history with the Union of the Amazonian collector population (CNS). At the end of the discussion, there will be a speech from the Debt for Climate campaign.

There will be a translator to translate for the guests from portugal to finnish. It is also possible to have a translation to english. Event is for discussion, there will be questions & comments sections in each theme. Discussion is coordinated by Matilda van Santen and Noora Ojala from Friends of the Earth Finland Land Rights and Forest group.

Program: Theme 1. at 17.00 – 17.30

Possibilities of forest protection during corporate and state agendas

How has CNS been able to create resistance to protect the Amazon rainforest in Brazil against powerful landowners and companies, so that collective forest ownership and culture of Amazonian collectors has brought livelihoods to families and more community forest and conservation areas have been established?

Challenges in Brazilian politics: how to fix the collapse of environmental ministries and administrative practices that occurred during Bolsonaro’s administration? How to prevent the corruption that has grown remarkably in environmental management during ex-president Bolsonaro’s administration?

The Finnish monocultural forestry model with clear-cutting leaves both the nordic forest  nature and the carbon stocks in a weak state. However, environmentalists still have very little space to protect forests in times of Finnish intensive forestry model managed by pulp companies and the state. Finnish forestry produces only a few wood products with advanced processing value that bind carbon for a long time.

What could Finns learn from CNS? How to protect the forest when the threat is either the state and/or companies’ plantation or tree field model?

Theme 2. at 17:30 – 18:30

Restoration

A dialogue between the forest protection history of the CNS collector movement and the Finnish forest movement. About one third of the rainforest in the Amazon region of Brazil suffers from logging that damages the rainforest ecosystem, as a result of which forest areas are fragmented or turned into cattle pastures or soybean fields. Pasture or arable land does not act as a carbon sink as efficiently as a rainforest. The water cycle also changes when the rainforest is no longer able to produce rain in the previous pattern due to fragmentation or deforestation. In this case, the rainforest areas become savannah and the water cycle of the entire continent changes, there is no longer necessarily enough water to irrigate the food production fields south of the Amazon region.

How to rewild, restore or reforestation the rainforest, how to fix the water cycle?

How to repair the traces of intensive forestry in the northern forest zone?

Where do you get the funds for rewilding, restoration and reforestation?

Have the carbon compensation programs brought funds to CNS?

Do the funds from carbon compensation programs work correctly, or can they end up in the wrong places or be greenwashing?

What does CNS think about Mercosur (a trade agreement in Latin America, which the EU is negotiating with Brazil)?

18:30 – 18:45 Speech by the Debt for Climate campaign

18.45 – 19.00 Free public discussion