Day 240 - 24 Apr 96 - Page 30


     
     1        deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon between 1966 and 1975
     2        to cattle ranching, 90 per cent of this under a state
     3        programme of fiscal incentives (Caulfield above)."
     4        A.  Your Honour, I wonder if I could add a brief statement
     5        to those two subsidiary paragraphs.
     6
     7   MR. JUSTICE BELL: It is very important to remember that a lot of
     8        the development pressure to clear tropical forests of all
     9        types for pastureland came about as a result of official
    10        policy, both by domestic governments usually in the form of
    11        fiscal and tax incentives, but also as a result in Central
    12        America and in Brazil of very large amounts of aid money
    13        being made available through institutions like the World
    14        Bank, but also through bilateral aid agencies to build up a
    15        beef export industry for economic reasons.
    16
    17        I think I am right in recalling that for the World Bank
    18        alone, in the late 1960s and up to the mid 1970s, disperse
    19        something like one billion US dollars for that purpose.
    20
    21   MR. MORRIS:  You said that they aim to build up the beef export
    22        industry for what?  To benefit who?
    23        A.  As far as the aid agencies were concerned, the benefits
    24        that they were trying to promote were for the countries
    25        themselves, to build up their economic resources through
    26        earning money through export and earning money through the
    27        sale of beef in the export trade, and that was a very
    28        significant driving force for tropical deforestation in
    29        Central America and Brazil..
    30
    31   MR. JUSTICE BELL:  Was this at a time when some of these
    32        countries already owed phenomenal sums of money, or was it
    33        as a result of this that they owed phenomenal sums or even
    34        more?
    35        A.  There are sort of two ----
    36
    37   Q.   I do not want you to go into any detail.  All I want to
    38        know, appropo of what you have said, is did they already
    39        owe large sums of money so that, for instance, a healthy
    40        beef export industry might help them make some repayments,
    41        or some interest at least on them, if there was any
    42        interest, or were loans from the World Bank part of the
    43        increasing problem of large debt borne by these countries?
    44        Without elaborating in any way, can you give me the simple
    45        answer to that if you know it?
    46        A.  It was certainly a contributory factor in helping to
    47        build up debt levels in these countries, although one has
    48        to be careful to distinguish between countries because the
    49        size of their ----
    50 
    51   Q.   Leave it there.  If there is not a simple straightforward 
    52        answer ---- 
    53        A.  The countries did have significant debt and both for
    54        the alleviation of that debt and to allow for greater
    55        government and private sector investment in building up the
    56        economies and therefore raising the standard of living for
    57        people, the industry was encouraged and these loans were
    58        made and then the debt increased substantially and
    59        significantly again in these countries in the late 1970s
    60        and early 1980s for other reasons related, in particular to

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