Joe Biden’s billions won’t stop Bolsonaro
destroying the Amazon rainforest
Marina
Silva and Rubens Ricupero
Funds offered to persuade Brazil’s ruinous government
to stop deforestation are meant well, but badly misjudged
Marina Silva and Rubens Ricupero are former Brazilian
environment ministers
‘Jair Bolsonaro’s government has transformed Brazil into
an environmental pariah, the world’s greatest destroyer of tropical forests.’
Thu 22 Apr
2021 08.00 BST
As a
candidate, Joe Biden built up the world’s hopes when he committed the US to
rejoining the Paris agreement, confronting the climate denialism of his
opponent and signalling that he was ready to treat the climate crisis as a
strategic priority. So far, that hope has become certainty – and relief for
those of us who are striving to find structural and global solutions to the
crisis.
For the
Brazilian government, presided over by the climate change sceptic Jair
Bolsonaro, the promise to rejoin the Paris accords sounded like a threat, even
more so because it was followed by a promise made during one of the debates to
mobilise $20bn (£14bn) in international funds for tropical rainforests –
including for Brazil – to stop the destruction of the Amazon. Bolsonaro reacted
by calling the plans “coward threats”.
Last year,
Biden may not have been fully aware of the extent to which the current
Brazilian government has transformed Brazil into an environmental pariah, the
world’s greatest destroyer of tropical forests and the foremost threat to the
planet’s already precarious climate equilibrium. By now, as Biden’s climate
summit gets under way, he will have been fully informed and repeatedly warned
of the risk of making deals that could strengthen Bolsonaro’s government and
allow it to further advance its destructive policies.
Still, the
Biden administration, along with ministers from Britain and Europe, has in
recent weeks been negotiating a deal with the Brazilian government. For all the
talk of cowardly threats, Bolsonaro’s environment minister, Ricardo Salles, is
asking for a yearly instalment of $1bn – in return for which, he says, Brazil’s
forest clearance would be reduced by between 30% and 40%. There are concerns
that some of these funds could be channelled to the very land-grabbers who are
behind the destruction of the Amazon.
Our warning
is based on the following fact: deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon is not
the result of a lack of money, but a consequence of the government’s deliberate
failure of care.
Receiving
international funds to implement protective measures and the sustainable use of
the forest is a normal and necessary transaction. The Amazon Fund is the most
celebrated example: it operated with German and Norwegian resources until
recently when, to the horror of the world, it was deactivated by the Brazilian
environment ministry. The government made the decision to discontinue the fund,
which still had about $500m in future donations, because it wanted to restrict
how the money was used.
Reducing
greenhouse gas emissions has never been a priority for the Brazilian
government. Take its own climate fund, from which about $100,000 was channelled
into sanitation measures rather than the mitigation of national carbon
emissions. Of course, sanitation is essential to health and wellbeing in our
cities, but it is far from a significant source of emissions. The government
also slashed the budget of the Institute of the Environment and Renewable
Natural Resources (Ibama), the department within the environment ministry
responsible for monitoring deforestation. In the first half of 2019, £2.2m was
allocated for inspections; last year, the figure was £700,000.
What the
government is missing is not cash, but a commitment to the truth. It denied the
existence of fires in the Amazon as the flames were burning. Brazilian news is
saturated with scandals that show persistent government action to weaken
environmental bodies, roll back legislation, and ignore international
agreements. Two years ago, it dismissed the head of the INPE – the National
Institute of Space Research – for the simple fact that the institution had
compiled data on the rise of deforestation. Last week, it dismissed the head of
the office of the federal police, who had led the largest investigation into
the illegal extraction of wood in the history of the Amazon. It has replaced
experienced civil servants with individuals without any forestry expertise in
several departments, and it intends to effectively shut down ICMBio, Brazil’s
foremost institution dedicated to the protection of natural reserves.
To reach a
billion-dollar agreement with Bolsonaro’s government at this crucial moment
will only strengthen its resolve: it will be a boon for the farmers and
land-grabbers who have illegally occupied public forests and indigenous land
and send the precisely opposite message to that which is needed in this crucial
year for the climate.
Marina Silva served as Brazil’s minister for the
environment, 2003-8. Rubens Ricupero served as minister for the environment,
1993-4
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