Certificação de manejo florestal em programas de fomento

• Autor(a) principal: Basso, Vanessa Maria
• Data de Publicação: 2011
• Tipo de documento: Dissertação
• Idioma: por
• Título da fonte: LOCUS Repositório Institucional da UFV
• Texto Completo: http://locus.ufv.br/handle/123456789/3079
• topic: Manejo florestal; Economia Ambiental; Forest management; Environmental economics; CNPQ::CIENCIAS AGRARIAS::RECURSOS FLORESTAIS E ENGENHARIA FLORESTAL::MANEJO FLORESTAL

The Brazilian forest-based sector has performed admirably in recent decades, generating employment and income in various regions of the country, mainly through commercial forest plantations. In recent years, increased market demand for forest products has resulted in corporate expansion programs. But due to both social and environmental pressures and high investment costs, corporations have avoided making new land acquisitions as a way of increasing production. One alternative has been to create private land owner development programs in which plantations are managed in partnership with rural producers. However, as the total land area managed this way increases, there may be societal questions regarding environmental, social and economic consequences of this production system. For lands entirely owned by a company, these concerns have been addressed by obtaining certification of sustainable forest management. Given this overall situation, the present study analyzed the context and application of forest certification for small property forest producers in Brazil. Initially, it was necessary to understand the workings of rural producer development programs in general, analyzing their potential benefits. Three agricultural sector programs are similar to forestry: poultry raising, pig farming and tobacco cultivation. The forest development programs are more recent than these other three, forestry not yet being completely consolidated and still requiring contractual adjustments. The analysis concluded that because of the attention paid to legal requirements and other matters related to environmental and social concerns, all these programs provide benefits to society in addition to increasing technical expertise of producers. It was also necessary to understand forest certification in Brazil from an international point of view, focusing on group certification, in order to analyze the prospects of certification for small and medium forest producers. This investigation showed there are a significant number of certified individual forest management units worldwide in forest certification but the number of group certifications is very small. In Brazil, the situation is no different: there are only seven certified groups (7.8% of all certified properties), and all are for management of native forests located in the Amazon region. Despite difficulties in obtaining certification, it is believed that group certification is the most viable alternative for small and medium forest producers in Brazil. Finally, the compliance with principles and criteria of forest certification was evaluated for a group of forest producers. The objective was to assess the real situation for Brazilian forest producers and determine their main difficulties in adapting to the certification process. It was found that all the producer lands investigated had some sort of non-compliance related to certification principles and criteria. The principal problems encountered were directly related to employment practices, including missing records, overtime payments, inadequate labor conditions and lack of safety equipment, among others. The activities with the largest problems were herbicide application and harvest operations. It was concluded that compliance is a challenge that depends on a joint effort of rural producers and corporate reforestation program managers.