http://www.multinationalmonitor.org/mm2008/092008/macdonald.html

Conservation Corp.: Enviros Ally with Big Grain Traders

By Christine MacDonald

Judson Barros lives in the state of Piauí in northwestern Brazil — a region known as El Cerrado that is traditionally dominated by dirt poor family farms and tropical woodland savannahs. It’s a stunted, scruffy landscape often overshadowed by the larger and more romanticized Amazon jungle to its west. But it is nonetheless important as Brazil’s second-largest ecosystem. Scientists say it is one of the most biologically diverse savannahs on the planet.

In 2003, New York-based agribusiness company Bunge Ltd. opened a soybean-crushing factory in the city of Uruçuí in the south of the state. In search of cheap land, a few commercial soybean farmers had already moved into Piauí from soy-growing strongholds in southern Brazil. Once the Bunge plant arrived, the conversion of Piauí’s Cerrado into industrial farmland began in earnest. The state’s soybean cultivation nearly tripled over the next three years. Such was the rush to expand the agricultural frontiers that new fields were often cleared without the proper land titles and required environmental permits. By 2006, soybeans became the state’s number-one cash crop.

To clear the land, plantation owners commonly stretch a long chain between two bulldozers and rip out the vegetation along their path. Then the roots and top layer of soil are swept together and set on fire. Trucks cart off the native wood to be burned as fuel at the Bunge plant. With help from state officials, the company obtained a 15-year tax holiday for the factory and permission to burn all the savannah hardwood within a 17-mile radius of the plant, eventually extending its wood purchasing to a 100-kilometer, or 62-mile, radius. Once all the native wood is gone, Bunge says it will switch to eucalyptus plantation wood that it is having grown just for this purpose. “It’s a fairly common practice in Brazil that people use biomass of a variety of types to fuel the plants, and that’s what we’re doing,” says Stuart Lindsay, director of global communications for Bunge.

Barros, president of the nonprofit Fundação Águas do Piauí (the Waters of Piauí Foundation, known as Funaguas) was outraged by this plan. So Funaguas teamed with the attorneys general offices of both the state and federal governments and sued Bunge, charging it had neglected to adequately study the environmental impact of its operations, as required by Brazilian law. A federal judge ruled in the group’s favor and ordered the company to find a more environmentally friendly alternative to the firewood. But when Bunge executives threatened to close the factory and leave the state, a judicially approved deal was cut that allowed the company to keep burning the firewood.

Funaguas filed a formal objection to the ruling in 2004. The group has also publicly denounced Bunge, alleging its involvement in an array of environmental and human rights offenses.

Funaguas’ fight with the multinational hasn’t made Barros popular among plantation owners and their farmhands. He has received death threats and has been burned in effigy. And he’s fighting civil lawsuits for the equivalent of $1 million that Bunge filed for alleged “moral damage” to its reputation. Lindsay says the company filed the suit “because of statements that were made implying that we were engaged in unlawful activity. We deny those claims and took legal action against Mr. Barros to see that those types of statements were not made anymore.”

Facing intimidation tactics, death threats and even lawsuits is nothing out of the ordinary for activists in developing countries who take on powerful economic interests.

Perhaps the most remarkable part of Barros’ fight with Bunge is that he’s found himself in conflict with one of the largest environmental groups in the world, Conservation International (CI). CI, a suburban Washington, D.C.-based nonprofit with operations in 40 countries, counts Bunge among its corporate sponsors.

CI officials in Washington say they are unaware of any organizational efforts to support Bunge in its dispute with Barros, but Barros says CI officials in Brazil have pressured him to end Funaguas’ campaign against the company. CI staff were also at Bunge’s side in a May 2005 meeting, where the company offered to drop its $1 million lawsuits if Funaguas would withdraw its objections to the Piauí operation. According to an official account published by CEBRAC, a Brazilian organization for soy growers that mediated the meeting, CI officials also made a presentation highlighting Bunge’s commitment to CI’s conservation work in the region.

For Barros, Bunge’s partnership with CI only serves to obscure human and environmental costs of Bunge’s expansion. “In Piauí, CI is good for nothing. It just gives a seal of approval to Bunge’s brutality,” says Barros, who resisted the pressure and finally won an important victory earlier this year. In March 2008, a Brazilian appellate tribunal ruled in favor of Funaguas allegations that Bunge’s use of firewood violates the country’s environmental law.

The ruling hasn’t stopped Bunge from burning up the local savannah, however. The company continues to run the plant on firewood, maintaining that it is the most environmentally friendly option available. It vows it will ultimately win the case on appeal.