BRAZIL'S EYE ON THE AMAZON

Last month, Brazil inaugurated a high-tech radar system to keep watch on its
two million square miles of Amazon jungle. The American-financed $1.4
billion Amazon Vigilance System will help catch drug smugglers and detect
incursions by Colombia's guerrillas. But it was originally conceived and
designed for environmental protection, and can still be a key tool in
combating deforestation and illegal mining. The system, however, is only as
good as Brazil's willingness to use the information it provides -- and there
the record is worrisome.

An average of more than 7,500 square miles of the Amazon go up in smoke
every year as ranchers and farmers clear land. The deforestation destroys
biodiversity and, by robbing the landscape of its ability to retain water,
contributes to drought and erosion.

The new radar system can help. The state of Mato Grosso, for example,
requires approval to burn land, and now officials can check that they are
burning only the approved land. It would help if this law were in use in
every state.

In truth, the problem in much of the Amazon is not that the authorities do
not know about illegal deforestation, but that they are indifferent or in
league with it. A major battleground today is 600 miles of road through the
state of Para that the government is promising to pave. Entirely
predictably, ranchers and big soy farmers are seizing land along the Para
corridor in anticipation that its value will rise. The American group
Environmental Defense says that if no measures are taken, the road will
result in new deforestation of an area larger than West Virginia.

In addition, at least seven rural union leaders fighting the illegal
seizures of land in Para have been murdered in the last year. One prominent
leader of a regional coalition, Ademir Alfeu Federicci, was shot last
August. Local police called his killing part of an ordinary robbery, a
theory so preposterous that prosecutors handed them back the case. But the
lack of progress since has signaled the government's indifference to these
crimes, and last month another union leader, Bartolomeu Morais da Silva, was
tortured and murdered. The new system could be a major step forward for
environmental protection, but the eye on the Amazon will be of limited use
if Brazil's authorities continue to watch illegal behavior -- and blink.