Aracruz Celulose will seek legal assurances regarding demarcation
The decision of Justice Minister Tarso Genro, favorable to the demarcation of 11,000 hectares of land claimed by indigenous communities in the state of Espírito Santo - almost all of which from land that is the property of Aracruz Celulose - surprised the company, which was in a process of negotiation with FUNAI (the National Indian Bureau) at the invitation of the Ministry itself.
The company regrets that the decision of the Minister does not take into consideration the company's arguments in its response to FUNAI's opinion favoring demarcation. In its response, Aracruz presented arguments and documentation - including satellite photos, historical records and studies conducted by FUNAI itself - showing the inconsistencies in the FUNAI opinion that they have never been even refuted.
"We will continue to seek indispensable legal assurances that there will be no further expansion of the indigenous reservation and we hope that this can be achieved through a process of negotiation, in a manner that avoids prolongation of the dispute, which affects not only the company and the indigenous communities but also the state of Espírito Santo and the country," said Carlos Alberto Roxo, Aracruz's director of Sustainability. "Such legal assurances are indispensable to allow Aracruz to continue producing, ensuring thousands of jobs and generating foreign exchange earnings for Brazil."
How the land donations came about
Despite all of the doubts raised by senior FUNAI employees, Aracruz satisfied requests of the authorities and in 1981 donated an area consisting of 1,700 ha for the formation of the first Indigenous Reservation in the state of Espírito Santo.
In the deed of donation, FUNAI declared that the lands that belonged to Aracruz were not indigenous domain territory. In 1983, Presidential Decrees authorized indigenous reservations with a total area of 4,500 ha.
Thus, Aracruz believed that the process for the demarcation of indigenous reservations had been concluded. Nevertheless, in 1993, the indigenous communities requested from FUNAI an expansion of the indigenous areas that had been demarcated in 1983.
As a result, FUNAI created a Working Group that , in October 1995, presented a Report containing a proposal to unify the indigenous reservations, which would require an increase by 14,200 hectares. In the understanding of Aracruz and its consultants, this report presented a number of vulnerabilities.
It was because he understood that the report in and of itself did not generate rights, that in August 1997 then-Minister of Justice Íris Rezende ordered the re-examination of the case by the Working Group, which returns with a new proposal for expansion, this time involving 13,300 hectares. The Minister did not accept the opinion in its entirety and, within his jurisdiction, determined an increase of 2,600 ha (Ministry of Justice Official Notices 193, 194 and 195).
Not satisfied with the decision of the Minister of Justice, at the beginning of 1998 Indians invaded property belonging to Aracruz. The company obtained a repossession injunction issued by a Federal court and the Indians left the invaded area peacefully, following an eviction operation conducted by the Federal police.
Subsequently agreements were signed requiring the indigenous communities to commit to accepting the Minister's decision and for Aracruz, for its part, to pass along funds to the Indians to be invested in social and economic development projects for the communities. Subsequently, Aracruz signed a commercial agreement with the Indians for the purchase of eucalyptus wood through the Forestry Partners Program.
As a result of the agreements signed between Aracruz and the communities, plus voluntary initiatives and commercial activities, since 1998 the company already has passed along more than R$23 million to the indigenous communities. Besides the generation of income, the activities stemming from Aracruz's funding resulted in the creation of 306 jobs.
In 2005, the Indians asked for a new increase in the size of the reservation of approximately 11,000 hectares. In March 2007, the then-Minister of Justice Márcio Thomaz Bastos returned the process to FUNAI, determining that the agency strengthen the studies "in order to prepare an appropriate proposal that assuages the interests of all parties". FUNAI returned the process to the Ministry of Justice in July 2007.
Click here to see the Work Group that participated in the ellaboration of Aracruz's response.
