Amazon at risk from Bolsonaro's grim attack on the
environment
Threats to the rainforest and its people and an end to the
Paris agreement are among the promises of Brazil’s presidential hopeful,
reports Climate Home
Fabiano Maisonnave for Climate Home, part of the Guardian
Environment Network
Tue 9 Oct 2018 11.32 BST Last modified on Wed 10 Oct 2018
10.17 BST
Many fear that the Amazon will become a free-for -all for
illegal loggers if Bolsonaro is elected, as he has said environmental law
enforcement will be relaxed. Photograph: Ueslei Marcelino/Reuters
No more Paris agreement. No more ministry of environment. A
paved highway cutting through the Amazon.
Not only that. Indigenous territories opened to mining.
Relaxed environmental law enforcement and licensing. International NGOs, such
as Greenpeace and WWF, banned from the country. A strong alliance with the beef
lobby.
In a nutshell, this is what Jair Bolsonaro, who is sailing
towards Brazil’s presidency after taking a near-majority in a first round vote
on Sunday, has promised for the environment.
An enthusiast for torture and the 1964-85 military
dictatorship, the retired army captain is famous for racist, homophobic, authoritarian
and misogynistic rhetoric. But his views on how to manage Earth’s largest
tropical rainforest are just as grim and appalling.
Bolsonaro has galvanised voters in urban centres who are
disillusioned with the political establishment’s corruption scandals and
attracted to his “tough-on-crime” positions amid rising criminality rates. He
received 46% of the vote on Sunday and now faces a 28 October run off with the
Workers Party’s Fernando Haddad, who polled 29%.
In the Amazon, illegal loggers, miners, land-grabbers, as
well as large land owners have rallied to his banner. Here, they don’t expect
Bolsonaro to enforce the law. On the contrary, the hope is that he fulfils his
promise to obliterate nearly all environment and pro-indigenous legislation. He
won massive support in rural central western states and all but one Amazonian
state.
In August, Bolsonaro raised eyebrows internationally when he
pledged to join Trump’s US and withdraw Brazil from the Paris agreement. That
means the country would no longer be committed to curb its emissions from the
deforestation of the Amazon, which is here a bigger source of greenhouse gas
than the burning of fossil fuels.
Bolsonaro accepts the climate is changing dangerously. CHN
asked him about this during a press conference in April. He said the solution
was in controlling the growth of the world’s human population.
“This explosive population growth leads to deforestation,”
he said. “Because you will not grow soy on the terrace of your building or
raise cattle in the yard. So we have to have a family planning policy. Then you
begin to reduce the pressure on those issues that lead, yes, in my opinion, to
global warming, which could be the end of the human species.”
Yet he praised president Trump’s policy on the Paris deal
and implied that it was part of a UN plot to strip Brazil’s sovereignty over
the Amazon.
“Congratulations to Trump. If it were good for them, [the
US] wouldn’t have denounced it,” he said, adding that a concept for a
“136m-hectare ecological corridor” that would be “under world’s control, not
ours” had “been discussed”. ” I don’t know how deeply,” he added.
Brazil’s current environment minister Edson Duarte said:
“Instead of spreading the message that he will fight deforestation and
organised crime, he says he will attack the ministry of environment, Ibama and
ICMBio [Brazil’s federal environment agencies]. It’s the same as saying that he
will withdraw the police from the streets.”
Speaking to the O Estado de S.Paulo newspaper, Duarte said:
“The increase of deforestation will be immediate. I am afraid of a gold rush to
see who arrives first. They will know that, if they occupy illegally, the
authorities will be complacent and will grant concordance. They will be certain
that nobody will bother them.”
Bolsonaro’s environment policies are tied to racist
attitudes toward minorities and Brazil’s indigenous peoples. In a speech last
year, he said: “Minorities have to bend down to the majority … The minorities
[should] either adapt or simply vanish.”
Expressing a view common to military circles, he has
claimed, without evidence, that indigenous land rights are part of a western
plot to create separatist Amazonian states supported by the UN.
“Sooner or later, we will have dozens of countries inside
[Brazil]. We won’t have any interference in these countries, the first world
will exploit the Indians, and nothing will be left for us,” he said last year.
Bolsonaro has promised to open indigenous lands to mining
and other economic activities. About 13% of Brazil’s territory is recognised
indigenous lands, most of them in the Amazon. They are a major barrier to
protect the forest, only 2% of rainforest deforestation has occurred inside
indigenous territory.
The law protects indigenous rights. Article 231 of the 1988
Constitution states that indigenous peoples have “original rights over the
lands that they have traditionally occupied”, although the land belongs to the
state and they have no ownership rights over minerals.
But there are concerns about whether Bolsonaro will respect
these laws. Several analysts have warned Brazil could slip towards
authoritarian rule. These fears have increased in the past weeks. His running
mate, general Antônio Mourão, has argued for a new constitution without popular
participation and raised the possibility that Bolsonaro could proclaim a
self-coup.
Both Bolsonaro and Mourão have defended the excesses of
Brazil’s military dictatorship, which displaced and killed (intentionally or
through diseases) thousands of Indians in the Amazon, amid an effort to build
roads and hydroelectric dams in the forest. The armed forces have never
recognised any wrongdoing.
“If he wins, he will institutionalise genocide,” says
Dinamam Tuxá, the national coordinator of Brazil’s Association of Indigenous
Peoples, in a phone interview with Climate Home News. “He has already said that
the federal government will no longer champion indigenous rights, such as
access to the land. We are very scared. I fear for my own life. As a national
leader, I am sure I will be punished by the federal government for defending
the rights of the indigenous peoples.”
During the campaign, Bolsonaro promised he will abolish the
ministry of environment and transfer its functions to the ministry of
agriculture. The agriculture portfolio will be handed to politicians from the
“beef caucus”, a conservative group of lawmakers who control about one third of
Congress and have opposed indigenous land demarcations and advocated for the
reduction of conservation units, among other measures, to expand the
agriculture frontier. Last week, they formally endorsed Bolsonaro.
In several speeches, he said he would end the “fine
industry” run by Ibama and ICMBio, to control illegal mining, deforestation and
logging. On Sunday he used his first post-election statement to vow to neuter
Ibama.
This is personal for Bolsonaro. In 2012, he was caught
fishing illegally inside a federal reserve off the coast of Rio de Janeiro and
was issued a $2,700 fine. Since then as a member of Brazil’s chamber of
deputies, he has targeted Ibama, going as far as presenting a bill that forbids
its agents to carry weapons, even though they operate in some of the most
dangerous areas of the country.
Ibama will be stripped of its environmental licensing
powers, he said during the campaign. These will be redistributed to other
official agencies. That means, for instance, that federal agency will no longer
be able to contain controversial projects such as the reopening of the disused
BR-319, an 890km highway that cuts from one of the most preserved areas of the
Amazon, and São Luiz do Tapajós, a giant hydroelectric plant planned to be
built in an area inhabited by the Munduruku indigenous group and river
dwellers.
BR-319, which connects Manaus to Porto Velho, is specially
troublesome, as it will allow for secondary roads. According to a study by NGO
Idesam, an area as big as Germany and Belgium combined is under its influence
and will become more vulnerable to land-grabbers and deforestation. Recent
attempts to pave it have been barred by Ibama.
“He names Ibama and ICMBio as his number one public enemies
and has given several messages that he will reverse environment and social
laws,” said André Guimarães, director of the Amazon Environmental Research
Institute. “However, one thing is what he says during the electoral campaign.
Another thing is what he will be able to do if he takes office.”
Guimarães said that recently the beef caucus has tried to
relax environmental and slave labour legislation, but failed in most of the
attempts due to strong opposition.
“He will try and he is obstinate, but it’s up to the civil
society to react against it. It will be a scenario with intense and almost
permanent disputes,” he said. “We must be indignant.”
Sem comentários:
Enviar um comentário