Workshop realizado pela GTZ e PGAI inicia debate sobre descentralização entre o Estado e os municípios

by Andréa Zílio

A tribuir responsabilidades e mais autonomia aos municípios quanto à gestão ambiental, é uma proposta ousada, idealizada pelo governo Federal, desde o início do trabalho de descentralização feito entre ele e o governo Estadual.

Deforestation is often wrongly blamed for causing floods, like in Guatemala this month, under a myth that has skewed agricultural policies, an international report said on Thursday.

Massive flooding is not usually caused by extensive deforestation, contrary to popular belief, a UN report published yesterday claims. A ban on logging and other government responses to widespread flooding are misplaced and potentially harmful, it says.

Forests play a role in preventing localised flooding but have little impact in larger-scale disasters, concludes the report by the UN’s food and agriculture organisation (FAO) and the Indonesia-based Centre for International Forestry Research (Cifor). "The frequency of major flooding events has remained the same over the last 120 years going back to the days when lush forests were abundant," the director-general of Cifor, David Kaimowitz, said. "The reason that people do believe what they believe is because at a very small scale there is a very significant link between deforestation and flooding. But at the larger scale you cannot extrapolate."

"Planting trees and protecting forests can have many environmental benefits, but preventing large scale floods is not one of them," said David Kaimowitz, Director-General of CIFOR.