Fonte: Financial Times 21/04/2014 

Com o título acima o jorna inglês Financial Times fez uma reportagem onde informa que municípios brasileiros da região amazônica estão utilizando drones, que são veículos aéreos não tripulados, para o monitoramento da floresta em preparação para a implementação do novo código florestal aprovado em 2012, citando que o mesmo seria uma lei dura pensada para salvar a Amazônia do desmatamento total. Os drones seriam/serão utilizados para mapear as propriedades e monitorar se os agricultores e outras pessoas estão mantendo o mínimo de cobertura florestal exigida pelo novo código florestal. Elaborada no Mato Grosso a reportagem cita as iniciativas das cidades de Alta Floresta-MT e Altamira-PA na utilização dos equipamentos, além de um pequeno comentário sobre o conflito de opiniões entre ambientalistas e ruralistas a respeito do novo código florestal.

Abaixo a reportagem original.

Brazil turns to drones to protect Amazon

By Joe Leahy in Alta Floresta, Mato Grosso

Brazilian municipalities are turning to drones as they prepare to implement a tough new law designed to save the Amazon from total deforestation.

Municipal authorities in the Amazon region, the biggest of which covers double the size of Scotland, are looking to use drones to map properties and monitor whether farmers and others are maintaining the minimum of forest cover required under the new forest code.

Passed in 2012, Brazil’s forest code was hailed as a breakthrough in the country’s efforts to protect the Amazon while maintaining its emergence as an agricultural power. It is already one of the largest exporters of sugar, coffee, soyabeans and beef.“With the acquisition of a drone, we would have a better result, we would have a panoramic view of how this process of recuperation is progressing,” said Gercilene Meira, a specialist with the state environmental secretariat in the municipality of Alta Floresta, in Mato Grosso state. “We have done some tests using balloons but it was not sufficient.”

The law requires farmers in the Amazon to preserve up to 80 per cent of the forest on their land as well as protect springs and rivers. Those who violated previous restrictions on deforestation are required to recuperate parts of the lost vegetation on their lands.

The need for the new law was highlighted last year, when deforestation of the Amazon increased for the first time in several years.

But the code has also proven to be one of the most controversial in the country’s history. Nearly two years after it was passed in a brutal showdown in Congress between environmentalists and the so-called “ruralistas”, the powerful faction of the legislature representing agriculturalists, it has yet to be implemented.

The debate has switched to the drafting of the secondary regulation required to implement it at the state and municipal level.

Environmentalists allege the ruralistas are trying to change the definition of the size of a property in order to qualify for more lenient vegetation requirements for smaller landholders.

The campaign group Greenpeace said recently: “The ruralistas are looking to benefit from the exceptions made for small property owners.”

Ruralistas, led by Senator Kátia Abreu, reject any claim of trying to subvert the law.

The delay, however, has bought time for Brazil’s municipalities to prepare the principal building block of the law – the rural environmental registry, a database that will contain a map of every property complete with details of its vegetation and plans for restoration, if necessary.

While satellite photography is available, municipalities will need much more detailed and frequent analyses of the properties under their jurisdiction to ensure the law is being implemented.

This has led Altamira, the country’s biggest municipality in the Amazonian state of Pará, to purchase a drone. “We have the drone already, we are awaiting further training for its operation,” said a spokesperson.

In Alta Floresta, whose patchwork of forest and farmland, much of it owned by ranchers, stretches up to the frontier of as yet untapped regions of the Amazon, the need to implement the new law stretches beyond legal requirements.

A few years ago, the region experienced a frightening sudden stop in water supplies. Degradation of the springs and rivers led to erosion in the water basin, diverting the flows away from the reservoirs.

The municipality is now saving money from other programmes to try to buy the drone at a cost of more than R$100,000, said the spokesperson.

“At present we do the monitoring through technicians in the field using a camera and GPS and going from property to property,” she added. “It’s a labour-intensive system . . . sometimes you have water in front, and water at the back, it’s arduous work and it is our main challenge.”

Giovani Amianti, director of XMobots Aerospacial e Defesa, a fledgling Brazilian drone manufacturer, said the company last year witnessed a sharp increase in orders for its drones, the biggest of which costs R$220,000-R$400,000, can fly for five hours at a time and photograph in detail 20,000-30,000 hectares per flight.

“This year we expect to sell 24 to 36,” said Mr Amianti.

The majority of demand so far has come from hydropower companies looking to monitor their vast properties in the Amazon against invasions by illegal settlers, deforestation and other problems.