DEFORESTATION
To Stop Amazon Deforestation, Brazilian Groups
Take Bolsonaro to Court
Deutsche WelleJun. 13, 2020 02:16PM
By Ajit
Niranjan
Civil
society groups and public prosecutors in Brazil are taking President Jair
Bolsonaro's government to court for failing to protect the Amazon rainforest,
adding pressure to an administration already under fire for mismanaging the
coronavirus pandemic.
Lawsuits
filed last week challenge the government on two fronts: reducing inspections of
exported timber — while demoting the environment agency expert whose team
advised against it — and freezing climate funds to preserve forests that other
countries also rely on to offset their carbon emissions.
They are
among a series of legal challenges that have been launched in Brazil after a
tumultuous year-and-a-half of Bolsonaro rule. His administration has overseen a
rise in deforestation, attacked the rights of people indigenous to the Amazon
and relaxed rules to prevent illegal logging, ranching and mining.
Bolsonaro
is a climate change denier who considers the environment to be a kind of enemy,
said Marcio Astrini, executive secretary of Brazil-based think tank Climate
Observatory, which provided the legal analysis behind the lawsuits. "It's
very hard to believe Bolsonaro will change his behavior or mindset. What we
really need to do is neutralize the attacks on the environment."
In recent
weeks, the Brazilian government has been rebuked by foreign governments,
investors and businesses for enabling deforestation — and by courts and
protestors at home for political interference and its handling of the
coronavirus pandemic.
Brazil's
supreme court ordered the government on Monday to resume publishing coronavirus
statistics after it purged the health ministry website of COVID-19 case numbers
and death tolls. The virus has killed more than 37,000 people in Brazil, which
has the second-most coronavirus cases in the world behind only the U.S.
"The manipulation of statistics is a maneuver of totalitarian
regimes," said supreme court judge Gilmar Mendes. "The trick will not
exempt responsibility for the eventual genocide."
Deforestation,
meanwhile, had already last year hit its highest level since 2008. On Tuesday
the country's space research agency INPE revised its estimates, saying it they
were higher than previously thought. Using satellite data, the scientists
calculated that year-on-year deforestation of the Brazilian Amazon rose by 34
percent between August 2018 and July 2019, felling an area of forest about as
big as Jamaica.
Georg
Witschel, Germany's ambassador to Brazil, told Brazilian news outlet G1 on
Thursday that deforestation makes it "increasingly difficult" to
ratify the free trade agreement between the EU and South American trade bloc
Mercosur.
Coronavirus
and Deforestation
Brazil's
environmental and health crises are closely linked. The coronavirus pandemic
had given fresh impetus to land grabbers razing swathes of forests as lockdowns
have kept law enforcement officers at home.
Now, the
fires that typically follow the felling of trees could further strain health
systems.
Blazing
wildfires, like the ones that devastated the Amazon last year, spout pollutants
that lower air quality and work their way into people's lungs, exacerbating the
same breathing diseases that leave people more vulnerable to the coronavirus. A
joint peak in forest fires and COVID-19 cases could overwhelm hospitals without
"incisive intervention by the State to curb illegal acts," according
to a report published in May by INPE.
That could
collapse health systems in several Amazonian states that are already operating
at the limit, the authors wrote. "If the turning point of the
epidemiological curve of COVID-19 does not occur immediately, in May 2020,
there will certainly be an overlap of fires with the pandemic."
This could
spell disaster for indigenous peoples and uncontacted tribes, said Sarah
Shenker, a campaigner with Survival International. "In Brazil, there are
more than 100 uncontacted tribes and they could be wiped out if invaders are
not removed from their territory."
Even before
the current coronavirus crisis, scientists warned that forest loss makes
pandemics more likely by increasing the chance that diseases jump from animals
to humans. A study published in the journal PNAS in October found that
deforestation of the Amazon significantly increases transmission of malaria, a
different type of disease.
Preserving
the Climate
The Amazon
rainforest — 60 percent of which lies in Brazil — is one of the world's great
carbon sinks. Preserving its trees and plants is crucial to meeting
international targets that limit global warming to well below 2 degrees Celsius
above pre-industrial levels.
Lawsuits
that take years to complete are not going to produce results fast enough, said
Ricardo Galvao, a former director of INPE who was fired by Bolsonaro in August.
To curb
deforestation in the Amazon, said Galvao, the best tools are "positive
actions that show [that] exploring the forest, rather than destroying it, gives
economic returns." For instance, international organizations like the UN
could certify products from sustainably managed forests and countries could
lower import taxes on such "green-stamped" goods.
Brazil has
a legal commitment to reduce deforestation in the Amazon to a rate equivalent
to about 3,900 square kilometers per year from 2020 onwards. In 2012, measures
to protect the Amazon had brought deforestation down to 4,600 square
kilometers, close to the target, but by 2019, it had rebounded to 9,800 square
kilometers.
The
Brazilian government, which in May brought in the military to protect the
forest, has disputed its image as an environmental pariah. "We are the
country that most preserves the environment in the world," said Bolsonaro
on World Environment Day last week. "Unjustly, [we are] the most
attacked."
Data from
Brazil's Institute of Socioeconomic Studies show government spending on forest
inspection dropped from R$17.4 million (US$3.5 million, €3.1 million) to R$5.3
million from the first five months of 2019 to the same period in 2020, while
funding for activities under Brazil's national climate change plan were cut
from R$436 million last year to R$247 million this year.
Ibama, the
Brazilian environment agency, did not respond to a request for comment.
Big tracts
of the rainforest have no recorded owner, making it easier to illegally grab
land, and a lack of law enforcement can even mean that farmers who comply with
regulations struggle to compete with those who don't.
Working
with sustainable farmers and fixing land ownership structures could help Brazil
slow deforestation during the coronavirus pandemic and recession, said Monica
De Los Rios, Brazil coordinator at the nonprofit Earth Innovation Institute.
"This is the most critical moment in the history of the Amazon."
Sem comentários:
Enviar um comentário