Day 239 - 23 Apr 96 - Page 30


     
     1        but some things are relevant to the issues in this case and
     2        some things are not.
     3
     4   MR. MORRIS:  Mr. Monbiot was indicating across this whole swathe
     5        is what he would call rainforest.
     6        A.   That is correct, and what I was trying to show was
     7        that it is no different in type to the rainforest in the
     8        north of the River Amazon, that we have broadly the same
     9        sort of vegetational characteristics.  So you cannot draw a
    10        line and then write off everything below that as not being
    11        rainforest.
    12
    13   Q.   Right.  Are there any other comments on Mr. Cesca's
    14        evidence that you would like to make?
    15        A.   Well, I must say that I found quite a lot of what he
    16        had to say disturbing simply because it seemed to indicate
    17        a complete failure to understand what is going on up there.
    18          By his own admission he does not speak Portuguese, but he
    19        seems to claim to understand the political and sociological
    20        situation in Brazil.  One of his claims is that the
    21        deforestation of the Amazon is driven by over population
    22        and by poverty.
    23
    24        Well, the over population -- I mean, Brazil is a country 35
    25        times the size of Britain and has a population
    26        three-and-a-half times the size of that of Britain.  It has
    27        an area outside the Amazon, but within Brazil, of land the
    28        size of India which has been cleared by ranchers and it is
    29        cultivated at a very low level because you have very few
    30        cattle per area.
    31
    32        The great majority of Brazilian peasants have cultivated no
    33        land, or very little land of their own.  The smallest, 56
    34        percent of proprietors, own only 3 percent of the land in
    35        Brazil.  What is absolutely clear is that the reason for
    36        movement of people into the Amazon out of the other areas
    37        of Brazil is that their land has been taken from them; they
    38        have been pushed off, they have been forced off, not
    39        through poverty per se, but through land alienation and
    40        seizure, and this is something which had been widely
    41        acknowledged by many, many researches in this field.  So, I
    42        feel he was labouring under a very considerable
    43        misapprehension on that particular point.
    44
    45        Also I feel that his own survey, flying along that supposed
    46        line in a light aircraft for 2 weeks, is not any way to
    47        work out what is happening to the vegetation below and, I
    48        have to say, having read his testimony to the court, I did
    49        not feel that he was a very credible witness in this trial.
    50 
    51   MR. JUSTICE BELL:  That is for me to judge.  By all means tell 
    52        me where he was factually inaccurate or where I have 
    53        mis-assessed the situation.
    54        A.   I am sorry, I beg your pardon?
    55
    56   Q.   But I have got to judge that.
    57
    58   MR. MORRIS:  He did say he was not an expert on vegetation
    59        matters.
    60

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