September 2020
The Amazon rainforest covers 3.4 million square miles, a little more than half the size of the USA and it produces 20 per cent of the world’s oxygen. It is the world’s largest tropical rainforest, and home to approximately 40,000 plant species and 1,300 bird species. The rainforest is also home to more than 30 million people and over 10 per cent of the world’s biodiversity. It is one of the greatest ‘buffers’ against the climate crisis, since the trees absorb carbon dioxide.
The Bolsonaro government is responsible for the greatest increase of deforestation and burning of the Amazon in Brazil’s history. It chafes at environmental protection laws and deliberately neglects its indigenous populations and has continued illegal threats to and murders of environmental activists and the destruction of indigenous peoples of the region.
In June this year [2020], the country saw a 10.6 per cent increase in forest devastation compared to the same month last year. In the first half of the year, the increase was 25 per cent over the same period in 2019, reaching 3,069.57 sq km, an area equivalent to twice the size of the city of São Paulo, or slightly more than the size of Yosemite National Park which is 3,027 sq km. In 2019, according to the NGO Global Witness, Brazil witnessed one third of all tropical forest losses in the world.
Laws weakened, people and forest neglected
The growth of forest devastation is closely associated with the loosening or weakening of various environmental policies made possible under the current management of the Ministry of Agriculture, by Ricardo Salles. Changes in the laws remove the protection from the region’s indigenous populations whose way of life, so closely associated with the forest, is one of the main factors in the conservation and protection of the rain forest. Among the measures adopted by the current government, is one that allows the invasion, exploitation and commercialization of indigenous lands. Another, which puts the populated areas of the region at risk, allows pesticides to be used closer to villages and other population centers. The government also vetoed an emergency project to protect indigenous populations against Covid-19 which required the state to provide drinking water, hygiene and hospital beds for these populations, making the situation of these groups even more precarious in the midst of the pandemic. In addition, a massive decrease in the budget of the Ministry of the Environment was promoted, which limits the power of the agencies responsible for monitoring illegal burning and deforestation actions. Finally, laws are still being processed in the Brazilian Congress which, if approved, will promote a loosening of the rules for environmental licensing, in order to allow exploitative new construction projects in the region.
It is important to note that many of these measures were taken in the midst of the Covid-19 pandemic, with the Minister of the Environment himself stating that “the pandemic must be used to ‘passar a boiada’ (loosen) the country’s environmental laws”, calculating that, with the attention of the media focused on the number of deaths and new cases of the virus in the country, little attention would be given to these measures. …
