Bolsonaro’s environmental devastation policy, by Gleisi Hoffmann

Only seven months of government, yet Brazilian socioenvironmental governance is being overwhelmingly annihilated, drawing the world’s attention.  Under the excuse that Brazil’s vast protected and demarcated lands prevent economic growth, Bolsonaro is ending environmental protection mechanisms to meet the exploitative frenzy of ranchers, loggers, and miners. Constitutional rights and guarantees are at serious risk in face of Bolsonaro’s intention of legalizing mining and mine sites on indigenous lands. With permission to kill assured by the President of the Republic himself, society watches the ongoing chaos in astonishment.

This weekend we learned of the horrendous murder of indigenous leader Emyra Waiãpi. Heavily-armed bandits invaded the Waiãpi Indigenous Land, in western Amapá state, seized a village, and have since been intimidating indigenous groups. Great part of this land is within the National Reserve of Copper and Associates (Renca), a vast mineral reserve situated between the states of Pará and Amapá. Bolsonaro, as one might expect, downplayed the crime, while what is being aired by the media is yet another stupidity that calls for a denunciation. The authorization for mineral extraction on indigenous lands is being negotiated as a bargaining chip for the Senate to approve the name of Eduardo Bolsonaro, the president’s son, to the Brazilian embassy in the U.S. A draft of Bolsonaro’s order in favor of his son is already circulating.

Under Bolsonaro and Minister Ricardo Salles the whole environmental sector is on the spot. For example, the government intends to reduce the size of 60 conservation units in which there are airports, railroads, federal highways, and ports under the pretext of providing “legal security” to undertakings both public or under concession to the private sector. What’s more, Bolsonaro wants to build a “Brazilian Cancun” on the coast of Rio de Janeiro, jeopardizing the protected Tamoios Ecological Station, which is in the municipality of Angra dos Reis.

Statements at the time of the electoral campaign had already made it clear what the Bolsonaro approach to the environment would be. Accordingly, as soon as he took office, the government put in place several changes designed to compromise not only preservation but also to facilitate destruction, in addition to relaxing oversight to put an end to the so-called “industry of fines”. The Department of Climate Change and Forests was closed down and Brazil stepped down from hosting the United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP-25). Salles, who has called into question the role of Chico Mendes, was found guilty and had his political rights suspended for three years in an environmental and administrative misconduct class action lawsuit filed by the São Paulo State Prosecutor’s Office. He is now dismantling the country’s forest monitoring mechanisms.

The Minister of the Environment also discredited the work of a number of bodies like the Chico Mendes Institute for Biodiversity Conservation Institute (ICMBio), and started a political witch hunt against public employees working for them, curtailing the institutes’ autonomy. The Brazilian Forestry Service was shifted to the Ministry of Agriculture, and the National Water Agency (ANA) is now subordinated to the Ministry of Regional Development. Salles has also announced the suspension of agreements and partnerships with NGO’s and is seeking to divert part of the resources of the Amazon Fund, also to benefit agribusiness.

Tens of  directives and regulations are, little by little, adopting an antienvironmental agenda, as in the case of the composition of the  National Council for the Environment, which was reduced from 96 to 23 members, leaving out representatives from state governments, NGO’s, and bodies like the Chico Mendes Institute for Biodiversity Conservation Institute (ICMBio), which is set to lose its offices nationwide.

In an assessment of the government’s first six months, Greenpeace pointed out that the single agenda adopted by the new administration was to undermine laws and agencies charged with protecting and overseeing the environment, in addition to adopting measures favoring environmental wrongdoers and promoting deforestation. To ICMBio, “Bolsonaro has already collected giant retrogressions for the environment and Brazil’s image” and “the present administration represents a threat to climate equilibrium and this will cost dearly to our economy”.

The warning about the risk of out-of-control deforestation in Amazonia had already been made by eight former Brazilian ministers of the environment, who in a communiqué denounced the dismantling of sectoral policies. “We must not silence before this. Quite the contrary. We insist on the need for permanent and constructive dialogue. Socioenvironmental governance in Brazil is being dismantled, in an affront to the Constitution. We are witnessing a series of unprecedented actions that are undermining the Ministry of the Environment’s policymaking and implementation capacity”.

The wave of international criticism has been recurrent and prompted the most prestigious U.S. newspaper, The New York Times, to report an increase in deforestation in the Amazon forest in the first six months of the Bolsonaro administration. Amazonia lost more than 1,330 square kilometers of forest cover, a 39-percent increase over the same period last year. According to that newspaper, “At one point, Brazil’s success in slowing the deforestation rate made it an international example of conservation and the effort to fight climate change. But with the election of President Jair Bolsonaro, a populist who has been fined personally for violating environmental regulations, Brazil has changed course substantially, retreating from the efforts it once made to slow global warming by preserving the world’s largest rain forest”.

Bolsonaro, who had already ordered Salles to “shove a hack on Ibama”, criticized the National Institute for Space Research (INPE) for releasing data showing a 68-percent increase in deforestation in the country. In a series of attacks against environmentalists, Bolsonaro stated that only “vegans who eat only vegetables” care about the environment, and promised to pave federal highway BR-319, connecting Manaus and Porto Velho. In the same line of ridiculous statements, Ricardo Salles said the government should worry about more tangible issues and that climate change was a subject for “academics” on how the planet will be “500 years from now”.

Contempt for the environmental area, compounded by the fact that the government turns a blind eye to the illegal activities of miners and loggers, has worried environmentalists and specialists. If in just a few months Brazil is already in a situation of utter decline as regards the socioenvironmental protection capacity of the State, four years of Bolsonaro administration are bound to leave only scorched earth behind. The offensive to devastate our environment will hit the Brazilian economy and may backfire. About 340 organizations and more than 600 European scientists have asked the European Union to stop negotiations on the trade agreement with the Mercosur unless the government ensures there will be no retrogression in Brazil’s socioenvironmental policy.