Brazil vows to cut deforestation in half

Environment Minister Carlos Minc, right, presented President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva with the Amazon plan yesterday. (Jamil Bittar/Reuters)

BRASILIA - Brazil pledged yesterday to cut the rate at which it was destroying its Amazon forest in half over the next decade to help combat global warming.

Setting its first such target after years of global criticism, Brazil will aim to reduce clearing of the world's largest rain forest to an annual 2,260 square miles by 2018, about half the recent rate.

"This plan improves Brazil's image; we'll have more moral authority internationally," Environment Minister Carlos Minc told reporters after a launching ceremony attended by President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva.

Brazil wants to become a major voice in global environmental issues and hopes the plan will help allay criticism it has done too little to fight burning and clearing by loggers, farmers and ranchers.

Amazon destruction makes Brazil one of the top emitters of greenhouse gases because trees release carbon dioxide into the atmosphere when they're cut down or burned.

The announcement of the new plan, more than a decade after Brazil said it would adopt targets, coincided with the opening of a United Nations climate conference in Poznan, Poland.

Some conservationists said the plan marked an important change in the government's attitude from blaming rich countries to taking action.

But critics said it was not ambitious enough and had been too slow coming.

REUTERS