Bolsonaro has blessed ‘brutal' assault on Amazon, sacked
scientist warns
In interview with the Guardian, Ricardo Galvão says if the far-right
leader doesn’t change tack the Amazon will be ruined
Tom Phillips Latin America correspondent
Fri 9 Aug 2019 10.00 BST First published on Fri 9 Aug 2019
06.00 BST
Illegal loggers are ramping up a “brutal, fast” assault on
the Brazilian Amazon with the blessing of the far-right president Jair
Bolsonaro, the sacked head of the government agency tasked with monitoring
deforestation has warned.
Speaking to the Guardian five days after his dismissal,
Ricardo Galvão said he was “praying to the heavens” the far-right leader would
change tack before the Amazon – and Brazil’s international reputation as an
environmental leader – were ruined.
“What is happening is that this government has sent a clear
message that there will not be any more punishment [for environmental crimes]
like before … This government is sending a very clear message that the control
of deforestation will not be like it was in the past …. And when the loggers
hear this message that they will no longer be supervised as they were in the
past, they penetrate [the rainforest],” Galvão said, claiming “enormous” damage
had already been done since Bolsonaro took power in January.
“It is a question of
brutal, fast economic exploitation.”
Galvão, an internationally respected scientist, was director
of Brazil’s National Institute for Space Research (Inpe) until last week when a
public clash with Bolsonaro cost him his job.
Days earlier, during a meeting with foreign journalists,
Bolsonaro had publicly questioned Inpe’s data suggesting an alarming spike in
Amazon destruction and accused Galvão of peddling “lies”.
That attack lead the MIT-trained physicist to hit back at
his “pusillanimous” president.
“I felt great indignation and great sadness,” the
71-year-old scientist recalled of what he called Bolsonaro’s “infantile” attack
on Inpe and its staff.
In an interview with the Guardian, Galvão accused Bolsonaro
and two cabinet members – the environment minister, Ricardo Salles, and the
institutional security chief, General Augusto Heleno – of waging a months-long
battle to undermine his agency, which uses satellite and radar technology to
observe and help prevent deforestation.
Galvão claimed the campaign was designed to discredit Inpe’s
findings and thus clear the way for greater exploitation of the Amazon.
“There is no doubt about it. They have much closer relations
with the loggers [than previous governments] … The president has said
explicitly that he wants to make deals with American companies to exploit
minerals in indigenous reserves,” Galvão said.
“It is a negative plan with the intention of reducing
control over the Amazon … because they believe that by exploiting the Amazon
they will achieve much faster economic development of the region … This is
completely mistaken,” the scientist added.
Already, in the first seven months of his four-year term,
Bolsonaro had helped cause “an enormous increase” in deforestation by
signalling leniency towards those wrecking the rainforest, Galvão claimed.
Environmentalists and scientists from around the world have
condemned Galvão’s sacking which some suspect is designed to cover up inconvenient
truths about the obliteration of vast tracts of jungle under Bolsonaro.
Nasa scientist Douglas Morton, who has collaborated with
Inpe for nearly two decades, said its highly-trained scientists deserved to be
“lauded” for their “pioneering, rigorous and robust” research which had brought
great benefits to Brazil and its environment. He called Bolsonaro’s move “concerning”.
Romulo Batista, a
Greenpeace campaigner in Brazil, said Galvão’s dismissal reflected Bolsonaro’s
hostility to science and the environment. “This is not a government that
is based on facts … this is a government whose modus operandi is the lie,”
Batista said.
But Batista said
Bolsonaro would fail to suppress the truth about the accelerating assault on
the Amazon.
“If he thinks that by sacking an internationally renowned
scientist … and bringing in someone who is going to hide or distort or
introduce data that is not true he will manage to convey the false impression
that Amazon deforestation is under control, he is very mistaken. There are
numerous other [monitoring] systems that will show the truth.”
After nearly five decades serving his country, Galvão said
he felt sadness at the circumstances surrounding his sacking and the plight of
Brazil’s environment. “The country is seeing a political scenario that is going
to cause great damage in the future.”
Galvão echoed fears over research suggesting deforestation
was pushing the world’s biggest rainforest towards a catastrophic tipping point
from which it would not recover. “This is a very great danger – not to mention
that the Amazon is essential to control the rain cycles across South America.”
Galvão also accused Bolsonaro of dismantling Brazil’s
hard-earned reputation as a environmental leader – a reputation his agency
helped cement by producing deforestation alerts that helped authorities slash
Amazon destruction between 2004 and 2012.
“Brazil was seen in a very positive light as a world leader
on environmental preservation. This is being rapidly destroyed by the Bolsonaro
government,” he said.
Galvão said he hoped the international community would now
support “those Brazilians who are struggling against this state of affairs, and
force the government to understand that increasing deforestation in the Amazon
will only cause harm to Brazil – and to the government itself”.
“I hope, and I pray to the heavens, that the president
changes his stance and returns to the correct policy Brazil adopted in the
past,” he added.
That seems unlikely. This week, as new Inpe data emerged
suggesting an “explosion” of Amazon deforestation in July, Bolsonaro scoffed at
his portrayal as Brazil’s “Captain Chainsaw” and mocked Emmanuel Macron and
Angela Merkel for challenging him on the environment.
To hoots of approval from his audience, Bolsonaro declared:
“They still haven’t realized Brazil’s under new management.”
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