On Tuesday (31/03), during a meeting with six Finnish congresspeople, Deputy Marcos Montes (DEM-MG), a member of the Committee on Environment and Regional Development, reaffirmed the great care Brazil has with the preservation of the Amazon, but assessed that that issue is sometimes misunderstood by the world.

He highlighted that that region represents 40% of Brazilian territory, and only 7% of it is used to produce food. 23,000,000 people live there, with low rates of human development (IDH). The forests of Brazil were in the past 7% of the total amount of the world, according to the deputy, and are currently 27%. “Which means that, proportionally, Brazil has preserved more than the rest of the world”, he concluded.

Deputy Luciano Pizzatto (DEM-PR), who is also a forest engineer and member of the Committee on Environment, expressed his admiration for the rational forest-exploitation model of Finland, but reminded that the conditions in Brazil are too different for its implementation in Brazil. “There are even huge differences between North and South within Brazil, which generate distortions when, because of the pressure of social movements, we intend to adopt identical environmental politics in the whole domestic territory”, said the deputy.

Pizzatto presented data on the use of Brazilian territory for the production of grains (45,000,000 hectares, 5% of the territory), of sugar cane (6,000,000 hectares, 0.8% of the territory, from which half is for the production of sugar and half for alcohol) and planted forests (also 6,000,000 hectares). Meanwhile, animal industry, with 210,000,000 cattle, occupies 195,000,000 hectares; Indigenous lands, 110,000,000; and forest conservation units, 85,000,000. “In order to increase ten times the production of alcohol without cutting any tree, it would be enough to increase in 15% the animal-industry productivity”, affirmed the deputy. For Pizzatto, we have enough technology for that, although perhaps we lack resources.

Nuclear Power
Deputy Marcos Lima (PMDB-MG), from the Committee on Mines and Energy, presented to the visitors data on the Brazilian power matrix, strongly based on electric power. He stressed that “we are crawling in solar and wind energy”, and asked for information on the composition of that sector in Finland.

According to the visitors, their country, despite the small population, has a high need of energy because of its high industrial production. It currently has four nuclear plants, and a fifth, which is being constructed and will be the largest in the world. But that production is not yet enough for their consumption: arrangements for the construction of a sixth plant are already ongoing. “There are no river resources in Finland; and we haven’t had a lot of sun or wind”, explained Deputy Reijo Kallio.

They are very careful about nuclear residues, and Finland deposits them inside their own country, with safety technology. Regarding alternative energies, that country joined the European Union’s program for the use of renewable sources, and concentrates its efforts in bio-energy, using forest resources.

Report - Rejane Xavier
Editing - Marcos Rossi
Translation - Positive Idiomas Ltda