READ ON BRAZILIAN FORESTRY CODE AND PRACTISE YOUR ENGLISH

[Received from my friend Sergio Rolim Mendonça who handed over this English lesson from Charles Valadão; selected and edited by Orlando Eduardo] Winners and losers still in dark in Brazil forest fight By Samantha Pearson May 26, 2012 It couldn’t have been a bigger anticlimax. Brazil’s President Dilma Rousseff had until today to announce whether she would veto a controversial new forestry bill(1) that will help decide the fate of the Amazon rainforest. Would Dilma give in to the powerful agricultural lobby that has pushed the bill, watering(2) it down as it progressed through the legislative process? Or, faced with the potentially embarrassing prospect of hosting the Rio+20 UN conference on sustainable development next month, would she throw out the whole text in disgust? Furthermore, after so many alterations, was the patchwork(3) text still even enforceable in practice? After numerous delays the government finally called a press conference at 2pm, but Dilma was nowhere to be seen. Instead, her agricultural and environmental ministers turned up(4) and declared there would be a partial veto (12 articles, 32 alterations in total)but said we would have to wait until Monday to know what they were. Only a few concrete details were given, such as the way in which the minimum requirement for vegetation alongside rivers would be calculated in accordance with the size of the land owned. While promises were made about not granting(5) farmers amnesty for past illegal logging(6)– a key issue – it is still too early to tell how this will be reflected in the changes made to the bill. For the hardcore environmentalists, it was somewhat of a defeat – after all, they had hoped for a full veto of the text. However, it seems we will have to wait until Monday to see who the winners and losers really are. VOCABULARY 1 *bill (n) proposed piece of legislation; a draft of a proposed law presented to parliament for discussion 2 watering (v) water down - to reduce or temper the force or effectiveness of : They watered down the plan 3 patchwork (n) ASSORTMENT, miscellany, mixture, melange, medley, blend, mixed bag, mix 4 turned up (verb phrase) the police turned up: ARRIVE, appear, present oneself; show (up), show one's face. 5 *granting (v) GIVE, award: he granted them £20,000. 6 logging (n) practice or work of cutting down trees into logs (block of wood) for lumber (the wood of trees cut and prepared for use as building material); business of felling trees for timber (wood prepared for use in building and carpentry)