The Brazilian National Space Research Institute (INPE) announced that deforestation in the Brazilian
Amazon between 1994 and 1995 nearly doubled, reaching its greatest extent in recorded history. INPE calculates that 29,000 square kilometers was cut and burned in 1995, based on the analysis of LANDSAT satellite photographs.

As news of the massive upswing in forest destruction was released, the so-called "environmental crimes act" is slated for voting today in the Brazilian Chamber of Deputies, the lower house of the Brazilian Congress. This critical piece of legislation would give the Brazilian Environmental Agency, IBAMA, statutory authority to enforce environmental law for the first time since 1989. Proposed language to make corporations liable for environmental crimes was removed, leaving the law applicable only to individuals. With liberalized investment rules and the establishment of a dozen Southeast Asian logging firms in the Amazon, exempting
companies from environmental regulation may prove ill advised.

Brazilian Congress on the Asian loggers released a report estimating that some 58,000 square kilometers of the Amazon is being destroyed or degraded annually, counting not only deforestation but also ground fires, logging damage, and the "edge effect" of fragmenting previously continuous, closed stretches of forest.

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