South America is burning out of control. In Bolivia, huge fires are ravaging the countryside, because of environmental mismanagement by a left-wing government. In Brazil, the situation is even more dangerous, because of violent aggression by a right-wing president, Jair Bolsonaro, against the country’s priceless natural resources and all who defend them. Because of the importance of the Amazon and Cerrado forests to the world, this is nothing less than a crime against humanity.
Fires have been spreading rapidly in both forests, while indigenous people are being driven out of their lands and even killed. Brazil’s environmental leaders are under attack, including respected professionals working for the government. Ludicrously, environmental organizations have been singled out for blame, without any evidence. After demonizing their work, Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro then proposes his destructive policies as the “remedy” for the disaster he has created.
To Bolsonaro and his Minister of the Environment, Ricardo Salles, biodiversity and indigenous peoples are worthless obstacles to the country’s development, despite clear examples of how both can be part of economic frameworks that generate wealth even as forests are maintained.
Instead, the new government defends the largely discarded notion that economic progress requires forest destruction, opening the door for short-term profits. Property owners or squatters all over Brazil are taking advantage of this new permissiveness to set fire to their properties and to public lands for illegal appropriation, especially in the Amazon forests.
Deforestation rates have doubled and fires increased more than 80% compared to the same period last year. Nearly 2000 square miles of forest, about the size of Delaware, disappeared in 16 days, according to NASA.
These short-term actions will impoverish Brazil over the long term. Ironically, the modern agribusiness sector, which traditionally fought environmentalists, now shows much more environmental concern than the people in charge of its protection. Agribusiness leaders like Marcello Brito (Head of the Brazilian Association of Agribusiness - ABAG) argue that environmental sustainability is indispensable for long-term prosperity. They also recognize the importance of a good environmental track record to build a reputation necessary for expanding trade. Modern agritechnology allows them to increase production within the footprint of land already cleared, thus avoiding further forest burning for agriculture and cattle raising. The foolishly destructive policies of the Bolsonaro government are actually destroying the future prospects for Brazil’s agribusiness sector.
In countless other ways, Bolsonaro is undermining the careful work of earlier governments, right and left. He has largely defunded previous conservation and protection programs carried out by previous governments. Effective long-term projects and partnerships have been cancelled. Park directors have been displaced, despite the quality of their work, and in many cases precisely because of their effectiveness. Some program leaders were replaced by police officers, and local experts have been transferred to unfamiliar areas. These rapid changes over the past 6 months have created chaos in formerly well-organized government agencies, since there are no rational discussions of future plans. Instead, vague and undefined projects are announced in general terms, such as new mining ventures, highway construction, and hydroelectric dam schemes in the Amazon. Bolsonaro has affirmed more than once that while he is president not an inch of protected area will be declared for indigenous people.
Even neutral experts are attacked if their research inconveniently exposes the damage of these slash-and-burn policies. Bolsonaro criticized the former director of INPE (Brazil’s institute for space research) Ricardo Galvão, for being the bearer of bad news, reporting an alarming rate of deforestation. Bolsonaro falsely claimed that the agency’s highly respected satellite imagery work was unreliable, that Galvão was lying, and that in any case all information that can “demoralize” the country should be presented to him before being released to the public.
Government incompetence is also adding to the crisis. Fines that were legally charged to land owners who deforested their properties to be directed to conservation work, are hardly being collected, resulting in a 29% decrease in these funds. Worse, as these anti-deforestation laws are not enforced, land owners who wish to clear their properties or even public land for illegal occupation or for whatever reason are now jumping at the opportunity. Fires proliferate as a result.
Paradoxically, Bolsonaro and Salles hold NGOs responsible for the fires and losses of biodiversity. They have tried to justify this false narrative to the Brazilian people through fanning xenophobia. According to the current government, Brazilian NGOs are supposedly working for international interests, to clear the way for foreign countries to take over Amazonia to extract the precious metals to be found in forested and indigenous areas.
Bolsonaro and Salles point to the large sums of money, mainly from Norway and Germany through the Brazilian Development Bank, given to the Amazon Fund through the efforts of Marina Silva, a political enemy who
was a former minister of the environment. But these claims fall apart on close inspection; all of the relevant expenditures were publicly audited and approved. When one attack fails, Bolsonaro and Salles are quite willing to try another – absurdly, they have blamed a small number of NGOs working for the Amazon Fund for starting 26,000 fires at the same moment. That baseless attack is the closest that the Bolsonaro regime has come to acknowledging the crisis it has created.
Apparently, Bolsonaro and his team did not expect the strong national and international reaction to what is happening in the Amazon. His misrepresentations and falsehoods concerning Brazil’s great natural and cultural heritage have been met by street demonstrations in Brazil and in other countries. World leaders have decried the Amazon fires as a direct result of misguided policies, and have threatened an international boycott of Brazilian products. Brazilians are grateful for this message of solidarity.
It is working.
In a televised speech on August 24th , Bolsonaro attempted to change course, guaranteeing that the military would put out the fires. It is clear that any improvement in Bolsonaro’s dismal performance on the environment, and any hope that forested lands will once again receive adequate protection, will depend on continued pressure from concerned Brazilians and protests from the national and the international communities. Only this pressure will help revert the predicament of the Amazon and Brazil’s other great forests, which today face the greatest crisis in their history. Brazil’s real wealth is its biodiversity, which is a global treasure as well. We must all pressure the Bolsonaro government to protect it while there is still time.
Contact: Mary Pearl, mary.pearl@mhc.cuny.edu ; (917) 385-9292 (c) or (212) 729-2918 (o)