by Staff Reporter
April 5, 2013 (TSR) – Venezuela has reduced its deforestation rate by 47.3% due to the government’s eco-socialist policies of the past 14 years.
According to data provided by Vice Minister for Environmental Conservation Jesús Alexander Cegarra, between 1990 and 2000 deforestation occurred in 247,000 hectares, putting the country in a difficult position internationally. In the next decade (2000-2010), those numbers were reduced by nearly half.
In prior administrations, forests were seen as a commodity with a fundamentally economic purpose. That is why the Ministry of People’s Power for the Environment established a minimum diameter before a tree could be felled, eliminated forest concessions, initiated programs like Misión Arbol (Tree Mission) to recover the country’s green areas and forests, protected animal species and conserved lands and waterways which have enabled the public to embrace and care for forest resources.
“We currently classify woods as: hard, semi-hard and soft, and as a function of their density and rate of growth, we establish a range for their logging,” Vice Minister Cegarra explained.
Moreover, in 2009 the Venezuelan government issued a decree to protect seeding trees. Recently the National Forest Inventory released a report, using techniques and methodologies required by the United Nations and Food and Agriculture Organization, which shows, with provable facts and figures, the recovery of forests in the country and the reduction in the deforestation rate.
With these actions, the Bolivarian government is creating strategic reserves, preserving natural spaces and guaranteeing the availability of food for fauna, thus continuing to strengthen Historic Objective V of the 2013-2019 Socialist Plan for the Nation.
