Devastação da
Amazónia próxima do ponto sem retorno
António Freitas
de Sousa 25 Julho 2019, 22:35
Novos dados
confirmam temores de que a política de Jair Bolsonaro incentiva a extração
ilegal de madeira no Brasil, o que coloca cada vez mais em perigo o pulmão do
planeta.
O desmatamento da
Amazónia brasileira subiu acima de três hectares por minuto, de acordo com os
últimos dados do governo, empurrando a maior floresta tropical do mundo para
mais perto de um ponto a partir do qual já não será possível recuperar. O
aumento confirma os temores de que o presidente Jair Bolsonaro tenha dado luz
verde à invasão ilegal de terras, extração de madeira e queimadas.
A devastação
atingiu em julho (até agora) 1.345 Km2, um terço mais que o registo mensal
anterior, segundo a monitorização do satélite Deter B, em órbita desde 2015. “É
muito importante continuar repetindo essas preocupações. Há vários pontos de
inflexão que não estão longe”, disse Philip Fearnside, professor do Instituto
Nacional de Investigação da Amazónia(INIA), citado pelo jornal britânico ‘The
Guardian’.
Entre outras
consequências, a devastação por interferir na ratificação do maior acordo
comercial entre o Brasil e a União Europeia se os legisladores da UE decidirem
que o país sul-americano não está a manter o seu lado do acordo – que inclui um
compromisso de desacelerar o desmatamento, em linha com o Acordo de Paris.
Os números
oficiais do INIA são um constrangimento crescente para Bolsonaro, que tentou
dissimulá-los e criticou a atuação do diretos do instituto. No início da
semana, o presidente insistiu em que os números deveriam ser exibidos pelo
Ministério da Ciência e Tecnologia e a ele próprio, antes de serem divulgados – o que aumentou o
receio de que os dados passassem a ser retidos
em vez de atualizados automaticamente online todos os dias, como até
agora.
Nos primeiros sete meses no poder, Bolsonaro,
eleito com forte apoio do agronegócio e dos interesses da mineração, agiu
rapidamente para enfraquecer os órgãos governamentais responsáveis pela
proteção das florestas, segundo a reportagem do mesmo jornal: enfraqueceu a
agência responsável pelo meio ambiente e retirou-lhe a independência,
colocando-a sob a supervisão do Ministério da Agricultura, liderado pelo líder
do lobby agrícola.
Entretanto, o
ministro dos Negócios Estrangeiros, Ernesto Araújo, afirmou que a questão do
clima faz parte de um plano marxista global e Bolsonaro e outros ministros
criticaram a agência que monitoriza a floresta (Ibama), por impor multas. O
governo também removeuvárias proteções para reservas naturais, territórios
indígenas e zonas de produção sustentável por povos da floresta e convidou
empresários a registar contra-reivindicações de terras dentro dessas áreas.
Após uma redução
de 80% na taxa de desmatamento entre 2006 e 2012, sucessivos governos relaxaram
as proteções: no ano passado, o desmatamento aumentou 13% para o nível mais
alto numa década . Este ano está a caminho de ser muito pior e a tendência está
de volta aos dias sombrios do início dos anos 2000.
Amazon deforestation accelerating towards unrecoverable
'tipping point'
Data confirms fears that Jair Bolsonaro’s policy encourages
illegal logging in Brazil
Jonathan Watts in Altamira
@jonathanwatts
Thu 25 Jul 2019 17.40 BST Last modified on Thu 25 Jul 2019
21.37 BST
Amazon rainforest
turned into farmland
Amazon rainforest turned into farmland. An
area the size of Greater London has been lost this month. Photograph: Nacho
Doce/Reuters
Deforestation of the Brazilian Amazon has surged above three
football fields a minute, according to the latest government data, pushing the
world’s biggest rainforest closer to a tipping point beyond which it cannot
recover.
The sharp rise – following year-on-year increases in May and
June – confirms fears that president Jair Bolsonaro has given a green light to
illegal land invasion, logging and burning.
Clearance so far in July has hit 1,345 sq km, a third higher
than the previous monthly record under the current monitoring system by the
Deter B satellite system, which started in 2015.
With five days remaining, this is on course to be the first
month for several years in which Brazil loses an area of forest bigger than
Greater London.
The steady erosion of tree cover weakens the role of the
rainforest in stabilising the global climate. Scientists warn that the forest
is in growing danger of degrading into a savannah, after which its capacity to
absorb carbon will be severely diminished, with consequences for the rest of
the planet.
“It’s very important to keep repeating these concerns. There
are a number of tipping points which are not far away,” said Philip Fearnside,
a professor at Brazil’s National Institute of Amazonian Research. “We can’t see
exactly where they are, but we know they are very close. It means we have to do
things right away. Unfortunately that is not what is happening. There are
people denying we even have a problem.”
It may also complicate ratification of Brazil’s biggest ever
trade deal with the European Union if EU legislators decide the South American
nation is not keeping its side of the bargain, which includes a commitment to
slow deforestation in line with the Paris climate agreement.
The official numbers from the National Institute for Space
Research are a growing embarrassment to Bolsonaro, who has tried to fob them
off as lies and criticised the head of the institute. Earlier this week, the
president insisted the numbers should be screened by the ministry of science
and technology and shown to him before being made public so that he did not get
“caught with his pants down”.
This has raised fears that the data could be vetted in
future rather than automatically updated online each day as is currently the
case.
In his first seven months in power, Bolsonaro, who was
elected with strong support from agribusiness and mining interests, has moved
rapidly to erode government agencies responsible for forest protection.
He has weakened the environment agency and effectively put
it under the supervision of the agricultural ministry, which is headed by the
leader of the farming lobby. His
foreign minister has dismissed climate science as part of a global Marxist
plot. The president and other ministers have criticised the forest
monitoring agency, Ibama, for imposing fines on illegal land grabbers and
loggers. The government has also moved to weaken protections for nature
reserves, indigenous territories and zones of sustainable production by forest
peoples and invited businesspeople to register land counter-claims within those
areas.
This has emboldened those who want to invade the forest,
clear it and claim it for commercial purposes, mostly in the speculative
expectation it will rise in value, but also partly for cattle pastures, soya
fields and mines.
Earlier this month, it was reported that thousands of gold
miners illegally invaded Yanomami indigenous territory near the border with
Venezuela. Elsewhere, illegal loggers have mounted at least two attacks in
response to Ibama enforcement operations, according to the Folha newspaper. On
4 July, they reportedly burned an Ibama truck in Espigão d’Oeste, Rondônia
state and last week they were said to have burned bridges in Placas, Pará
state.
Rather than defend his officials, the environment minister
Ricardo Salles appeared to side with the loggers when he gave a speech to a
group of them in Rondônia soon afterwards, in which he reportedly told them:
“The timber industry deserves to be respected … What happens today in Brazil,
unfortunately, is the result of years and years and years of a public policy of
producing laws, rules, regulations that are not always related to the real
world. What we are doing now is precisely bringing the legal part of the real
world that happens in every country from north to south.”
During a recent G20 meeting, Bolsonaro told the German
chancellor Angela Merkel that she had no right to criticise because Brazil’s
conservation record was superior to that of Europe’s. This is a dubious claim,
according to Climate Observatory, which cites World Bank data that shows
Germany has given protected status to a bigger share of its land than Brazil.
Brazil is also going backwards fast. After an 80% reduction
in the rate of deforestation between 2006 and 2012, successive governments have
relaxed protections. Clearance has been creeping up. Last year, deforestation
rose 13% to the highest level in a decade. This year is on course to be far
worse and the trend is back towards the dark days of the early 2000s.
“Unfortunately, it is absurd, but it should not catch anyone
by surprise. President Jair
Bolsonaro and minister Ricardo Salles are dismantling our socio-environmental
policies,” said Carlos Rittl, the executive secretary of the Climate
Observatory, an NGO formed by a coalition of environmental groups.
He said Salles
had eradicated the department responsible for policies to combat deforestation,
that no leaders have been appointed in eight of the nine Ibama regional
offices, and that operations to combat environmental crimes declined 70% between
January and April 2019 compared with the same period last year.
The Deter
satellite data is considered preliminary, but it is usually a guide to the
longer-term trends. More detailed annual figures are usually released towards
the end of the year, after the National Institute for Space Research has
calculated data from the more powerful Prodes satellite system.
Trees are
considered essential to climate stability. Earlier this month, a study
indicated that planting a trillion trees could remove two-thirds of all the
emissions that have been pumped into the atmosphere by human activities. But scientists say maintaining existing
forests, particularly in the tropics, is far more important.
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