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BRAZILIAN FORESTS AT THE BRINK

As the Brazilian Congress is poised to vote on a new Forest Code, the future of the Amazon and forests across Brazil hang in balance. Sadly and ironically, a law proposed last year by Communist Party deputy Aldo Rebelo would significantly reduce forest protection and offer amnesty to those who perpetrated past illegal logging.

Marina Silva has been mobilizing forces across Brazil and the two leading scientific bodies have called for a two year pause in the rush toward legislation:

"What is being proposed [in the report of Aldo Rebelo] has no scientific basis," says engineer Antonio Donato Nobre, of the National Institute for Space Research (INPE). Noble [who] does not directly criticize the Agrarians and Brazil told the Agency that the claim by farmers is "baseless"in relation to the requirements of the Forest Code, which is from1965. "There are a number of topics that need further definition," said the scientist, noting, however, he does not believe that the current code requirements impede rural activity.

The government of President Dilma Rousseff has been ignoring these pleas in a determined drive to push economic development into high gear.

In the above video, shot earlier this year in the Amazon forest, Santo Daime Master Counselor Padrinho Luiz Mendes offers his well-known defense of the forest -- a hymn and a dramatization of a message from the forest spirit Casmerim (a feminine entity who is part of a class of spirit defenders of the forest). It tells of the colossal richness and benefits offered by the forest and demands an end to the ignorance that would destroy it.

The drama in the Congress is unfolding as this is being posted.