The rapporteur of the Bill of Law 5586/09, deputy Rebecca Garcia (PP-AM), announced on Tuesday (11) that she wants to approve a substitute to proposal of deputy Lupércio Ramos (PMDB-AM), granting carbon credits to landowners to avoid deforestation, in time to be displayed at the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (COP) 16, to be held in December in Mexico.

“This will strengthen the discourse of Brazil in international negotiations”, said the representative during a public hearing of the Committee on Environment and Sustainable Development.
Rebecca said that the clean bill should be more comprehensive than the original text and it will not just seek to preserve the forests. "We talk a lot about Amazon, but all biome must be protected", she said.

Brazilian National Policy
According to the superintendent of the Amazonas Sustainable Foundation (Fundação Amazonas Sustentável), Virgilio Vianna, Bill of Law 5586/09 should serve as a legal framework for a national policy to reduce emissions of polluting gases from deforestation and degradation.

He said that, however, the law must be flexible enough to absorb guidelines which may be adopted in international regulation. "At the Conference in Copenhagen, countries did not reach a consensus on policy for reducing deforestation", he added.

Monitoring
The director of the Department of Climate Change, Ministry of the Environment, Thaís Linhares Juvenal, warned of the need to establish an integrated monitoring. "The conservation of a forest cannot induce deforestation elsewhere", he noted.

The coordinator of public policy for the Environmental Research Institute of Amazonia (IPAM), André Lima, in turn, suggested that the proposal clearly defines the expected results with the measure. "The text could bring the levels of carbon reduction desired in each state," exemplified.

Indigenous issues
The vice-general coordinator of the Coordination of the Indigenous Organizations of the Brazilian Amazon (Coordenação das Organizações Indígenas da Amazônia Brasileira), Sônia Guajajara, defended the inclusion of forest peoples in the proposal debate, to assure that they are also benefited in the division of resources."The proposal is very tied to the ownership of the land that we do not own. We need to create mechanisms to reward those who have always kept the forest standing”, she said.

Reporting - Marcelo Oliveira
Edition - Natalia Doederlein
Translation - Grupo Solucion-SP Language/Suzana Pinheiro Lara