Brazil Portal

Brazil lagging in fight against trafficking

Brazil Institute — Tue, 21 May 2013 14:24:40 +0000

Fabiola Ortiz – IPS, 05/20/2013

In contravention of international law, in Brazil trafficking in human beings remains invisible and unpunished, which encourages the practice of trafficking for sexual exploitation, forced labour, illegal adoption and the trade in human organs, according to experts.

Local laws punish drug trafficking more severely than human trafficking. The sale of drugs carries penalties of between five and 15 years, while trafficking of persons for sexual exploitation is punished with a maximum sentence of eight years, with work release allowed.

“Human trafficking is still an invisible crime. What we have here now is real impunity,” judge Rinaldo Aparecido Barros, a member of the National Council of Justice’s working group on human trafficking, told IPS.

Brazil probes rumor that set off panic run on state bank

Brazil Institute — Tue, 21 May 2013 14:22:21 +0000

Yahoo News, Reuters, 5/20/2013

Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff said on Monday she ordered the Federal Police to investigate the source of a rumor that sent thousands of poor Brazilians running to state bank branches seeking payment of a monthly family stipend.

A rumor that payments of the Bolsa Familia program would be ended led crowds to line up over the weekend at branches of the Caixa Economica Federalgovernment bank to get their money. The rumor spread by word of mouth and cellphone text messages.

Angry beneficiaries smashed glass doors and automatic teller machines in some branches on Saturday in a surprising outburst that reminded Brazilians of chaotic scenes in crowded banks during financial crises two decades ago before Brazil stabilized its economy.

Biofuels a boon for Brazil’s rural poor, but obstacles remain elsewhere

Brazil Institute — Tue, 21 May 2013 14:19:07 +0000

Paige McClanahan – The Guardian, 05/21/2013

Biofuels have long been hailed as one of the potential answers to climate change. Their environmental credentials are controversial, but a handful of countries are now looking at them from another angle entirely: they want to use biofuels to try to reduce poverty among rural smallholder farmers.

Such efforts are in full force in Brazil, a country that is home to both a sizeable biofuels industry and about 4.1m small-scale family farms. But while some of the country’s biofuels policies have fallen short, others have proved a boon to the rural poor. Smallholder farmers have seen their incomes rise thanks to the introduction of more progressive standards and new rules on contract negotiations.

“The numbers show that the farmers in Brazil … have been earning far more than they were before – not only in absolute quantities, but also as a percentage of the whole value of the [biofuels production] chain,” says Mairon Bastos Lima, a PhD researcher at the Institute for Environmental Studies at the University of Amsterdam and the author of a recent briefing paper (pdf) that looked at the social impacts of biofuels polices in Brazil, India, and Indonesia. Bastos Lima describes the Brazilian biofuels policies as “the best example” he has seen.

Roberto Azevedo’s WTO appointment gives Brazil a seat at the top table

Brazil Institute — Tue, 21 May 2013 14:16:08 +0000

Nicolas Bourcier – The Guardian, 05/21/2013

Earlier this month the World Trade Organisation (WTO) announced that it had chosen the Brazilian Roberto Azevedo, 55, as its next director general. In September he will take over from France’s Pascal Lamy, who has served two four-year terms.

It is a personal success for this career diplomat, but it is also a victory for Brazil on the international scene. The Brazilian diplomatic corps pulled out all the stops to convince a majority of the 159 member states that their candidate was the right choice. But Azevedo’s appointment is also a new departure, this being the first time that a Brazilian has headed one of the key bodies in the postwar Bretton Woods system. The country at last has a seat at the top table.

The vote “shows a global order in transformation”, said foreign minister Antonio Patriota, with “emerging markets [showing] leadership”.

World Cup 2014: Brazil opens 72,900 seat National Mane Garrincha Stadium

Brazil Institute — Tue, 21 May 2013 14:13:55 +0000

Ian Rodgers – Bleacher Report, 05/21/2013

The preparations for the World Cup finals in Brazil next year are gathering at pace as the country opened its latest stadium in the capital, Brasilia.

The new 72,800-seater National ManéGarrincha Stadium was unveiled on Saturday ahead of its first match, the Federal District league championship final between Brasilia and Brasiliense.

The new stadium is the fifth to be completed and handed over in readiness for the World Cup finals next year following the re-opening of the iconic Maracana Stadium last month, as the Daily Mail reported.

Rumors spark bank run, break-ins in Brazil

Brazil Institute — Mon, 20 May 2013 14:47:10 +0000

Deepanshu Bagchee – CNBC, 05/20/2013

Rumors that Brazil’s social security fund called Bolsa Familia was to be cancelled led thousands of people to rush to withdraw money from a Brazilian bank over the weekend.

Customers lined up at ATMs at dozens of bank branches of Caixa Economica Federal, a government-owned bank, which pays the social security subsidy on Saturday and Sunday.

“The bank branches themselves aren’t open on Saturdays. What happened is that once the rumor gained momentum, people flocked down to their local branches to try to withdraw money from the ATMs,” Rafael Carregal, a journalist at Brazil’s main TV network Globo told CNBC.

Brazil economists forecast 2013 growth below 3% for first time

Brazil Institute — Mon, 20 May 2013 13:16:58 +0000

Raymond Colitt – Bloomberg, 05/20/2013

Brazil’s economy will grow below 3 percent in 2013, economists predicted for the first time in a central bank survey of about 100 analysts published today.

Latin America’s largest economy will grow 2.98 percent this year, down from the previous week’s projection of 3 percent. It would be the first time in a decade that Brazil grows below 3 percent for three consecutive years.

Brazil’s economy has struggled to recover from last year’s expansion of 0.9 percent as accelerating inflation undermines consumer demand. While economists raised their 12-month inflation forecast to 5.64 percent from 5.57 percent, they maintained their projection for inflation this year and next at 5.8 percent, according to the survey.

Wanted: miners in Brazil for Anglo American

Brazil Institute — Mon, 20 May 2013 13:14:34 +0000

John W. Miller – The Wall Street Journal, 05/19/2013

One key to controlling the wage inflation that bedevils mining companies is finding a captive labor force that’s willing to be trained, such as the one in this remote town, where cows outnumber residents almost two to one.

Nineteen-year-old Augusto Alonso Silva is eager to earn $600 a month as an industrial mechanic at an Anglo American AAL.LN -1.85% PLC iron-ore mine here. The pay is about half what mining wages are elsewhere in Brazil, but Mr. Silva says it is twice as much as he dreamed of earning as a soldier. “Now I have a different dream,” says the 19-year-old, during a break in a basic engineering class.

While rising labor costs have become almost routine for global mining firms—a drill operator in Australia can earn $200,000 a year and a truck driver in Chile $70,000—locals here have been willing to take lower-level jobs such as operating a conveyor belt or maintaining machines for less than $10,000 a year.

Brazilian court council removes a barrier to same-sex marriage

Brazil Institute — Thu, 16 May 2013 13:43:24 +0000

Simon Romero – The New York Times, 05/14/2013

The council overseeing Brazil’s judiciary ruled on Tuesday that notary publics cannot refuse to performsame-sex marriage ceremonies, a decision that opens the way for gay couples across Latin America’s largest country to marry.

The move by the National Council of Justice, a 15-member panel led by Joaquim Barbosa, the chief justice of the nation’s high court, effectively legalizes gay marriage throughout Brazil, legal scholars here said. The decision follows legislation in twoneighboring countries, Argentina and Uruguay, where lawmakers have managed to pass bills authorizing same-sex marriage nationwide in recent years.

Still, there is some room for judicial appeals of the Brazilian decision, potentially within the high court, the Supreme Federal Tribunal, and resistance may emerge in Congress, where gay-marriage legislation has faced opposition from an influential bloc of evangelical Christian lawmakers. Even so, supporters of same-sex marriage described the council’s decision as pioneering.

Amazon be damned: deforestation undermines future viability of Brazil’s hydropower projects

Brazil Institute — Thu, 16 May 2013 13:40:16 +0000

Erin Brodwin – Scientific American, 05/15/2013

The Amazon Basin is the epicenter of the world’s hydropower plants—the same gushing rains that give the region its lush foliage make it a prime destination for developers seeking to capitalize on this allegedly renewable energy source. But the long-term sustainability of these projects, which use the natural flow of water to generate electricity, is now under scrutiny.

A new study of the Belo Monte Dam, one of the world’s largest hydropower energy complexes currently under construction on the Xingu River in the eastern region of the basin, found that large-scale deforestation in the Amazon poses a significant threat to a dam’s energy-generating potential.

Although many studies have examined the impacts of deforestation on the immediate vicinity of hydropower projects, less attention has been paid to its effects on a regional scale. In fact, earlier studies found that a loss of trees within the water basin of hydropower sites increased the energy-generating capacity of the dam in the short-term, because less trees were available to suck water from the ground and export it outside the watershed in a process known as evapotranspiration.