Brazil’s response
The 20th meeting of the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES) is scheduled to bring the two-year conflict to a head.
The conference is scheduled to vote on whether to enact stronger restrictions on Brazilian hardwood.
The tree has been designated as endangered by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) since 1998.
However, a proposal from the Brazilian government would place Brazil in the top tier of trade restrictions and increase its CITES protections.
The international trade of endangered species is regulated by CITES, which includes both plants and animals.
The third is the least restrictive: Export permits for a species from that country are required if it is endangered in a particular nation.
Wherever the species is extracted is required to obtain export permits, according to Appendix II’s stricter regulations. Brazilwood is one of the most threatened species in this group.
However, Brazil wants to move Brazil up to appendix one, a category for threatened species.
Except for non-commercial use, the trade of plants and animals in that appendix is largely prohibited. However, in that situation, both import and export permits are necessary.
Brazil asserts in its proposal that the plant’s extinction must be fought for by the upgraded restrictions.
There are still about 10,000 adult Brazilian brazilwood trees. According to the proposal, illegal logging has been a significant factor in the population decline that has decreased by 84 percent over the past three generations.
According to the proposal, “Selective extraction of Brazilwood continues to be a practice both inside and outside protected areas.”
The bow-making industry for musical instruments is the destination of these woods, according to “every case recently discovered.”
According to the report, “520 years of intense exploitation” have resulted in “the complete exclusion of the species in several regions.”
45 businesses and bowmakers were fined in one operation that the Brazilian police launched in October 2018.
Nearly 292,000 unfinished wood blocks intended to be bows and blanks were seized.
According to another investigation conducted between 2021 and 2022, police came to the conclusion that an estimated $46 million in profits had been generated by the illegal brazilwood trade.
Source: Aljazeera
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