Bolsonaro effect: How a president managed to destroy the Brazilian Amazon in record time

Covered by Bolsonaro’s permissive speeches, loggers increased tree felling for forest clearance and farmers ‘expanded’ their cultivation areas in the region

Jair Bolsonaro came to the Presidency thanks to dirty tricks, smear campaigns, the use of the system of justice and other tricks for a clear mission: to fill Brazil with chaos. Proof of this is the disaster of his administration, not only in the face of the pandemic caused by COVID-19, but also due to the enormous environmental damage caused to the Amazon.

According to a study by the National Institute for Spatial Research (INPE), the Brazilian Amazon lost 10,129 square kilometers (km2) of its vegetation cover between August 2018 and July 2019, an area equivalent to the territory of a country like Lebanon, and which is the highest level of deforestation for a year since 2008.

The area deforested by the felling of trees, fires, and the increase in land for cultivation in the aforementioned period was 34.4% higher than the 7,536 km2 destroyed in the immediately previous year (August 2017 and July 2018).

Despite the progressive growth of deforestation in the last three years, from the 6,947 square kilometers destroyed in 2017, the devastated area in 2019 is almost a third of the 29,059 km2 of plant cover that the Amazon lost in 1995, which, up to now, is an appalling record.

Deforestation in the last period was 3.76% higher than that calculated by the INPE itself in November 2019, when the agency, based on a system of projections, disclosed that the Amazon had lost 9,762 km2 in the last year.

The extension was corrected with the disclosure of the consolidated destroyed area, which INPE calculated based on the model known as the Amazon Legas Satellite Deforestation Monitoring Project (PRODES). This model calculates deforestation from the analysis of 229 Landsat satellite images, which allows deforested areas of more than 6.25 hectares to be identified.

Thus, the study establishes that, of the total rain forest destroyed in Brazil in 2019, 84.56% was concentrated in four of the nine Amazon states: Pará, Mato Grosso, Amazonas and Rondonia.

Bolsonaro razed the Amazon in his first year in office

Data released by INPE confirms that deforestation grew significantly in the first year of the government of the far-right leader, who assumed his mandate in January 2019 and has promoted initiatives questioned by environmentalists, such as the reduction of taxation in the Amazon, the incentive to agriculture in the region and the legalization of mining in the rainforest.

In July 2019, Bolsonaro removed the then president of the INPE due to his disagreements about the methods used by the agency to measure deforestation.

The President considered that the data presented by the agency were false and, in his opinion, they were disclosed in bad faith by public officials with political interests, with the intention of harming both Brazil and its government.

According to his critics, the loggers, protected by Bolsonaro’s permissive speeches about the Amazon, increased the clearing of the forests and the farmers expanded their cultivation areas in the region.

The INPE study does not include all the jungle destroyed by the voracious forest fires that spread in 2019 in the Amazon, which started in May and had their worst moment in August.

According to INPE’s preliminary projections, deforestation in the Amazon continued to grow this year and was not even stopped by the social distancing measures imposed by regional governments to try to slow down the advance of the pandemic.

Last April, in reaction to criticism and after having appointed his vice president, General Hamilton Mourao, as head of a council he created to “take care of the Amazon”, Bolsonaro sent troops from the Armed Forces to different states for, supposedly, combat deforestation and prevent fires.

Not even the pandemic stops the destruction of the Amazon

On April 22, in the midst of the growing pandemic that has made Brazil the second country with the highest number of infections in the world, a series of measures were approved by the Ministry of Environment that facilitate deforestation in the Amazon.

In a video of the ministerial meeting, released by order of the Federal Supreme Court (STF), Minister Ricardo Salles said that the period of the pandemic would be ideal to pass “infra-legal”, “simplification” and “deregulation” reforms of environmental laws .

Immediately afterwards, Salles summoned other ministers to “pass the boiada [herd of oxen] and change the entire regulation”, while the press was busy dealing with the impact of the new coronavirus in Brazil.

On the day of the meeting, Brazil accumulated 45,000 cases and almost 3,000 deaths. At the moment of writing this note, it already exceeds 1.2 million positive cases and registers more than 53 thousand deaths. But what did the minister mean by “infra-legal reforms” and “pass the boiada”?

According to the Portuguese dictionary, the term infralegal refers to “acts and precepts that are not perfectly in accordance with legal mechanisms”. And the boiada [herd of oxen]? The colloquial expression is generally intended to translate as ‘an ease so as to enter somewhere’.

The Brasil de Fato newspaper selected some of the environmental policies recently approved by the Bolsonaro regime and others that are in the process of being approved, to show the seriousness of the effects of the ‘herd’ (boiada) led by Ricardo Salles.

Undermining, pesticides, militarization and censorship

“A series of changes to the normative instructions of the Brazilian Institute of Environment and Renewable Natural Resources (IBAMA), published between March and April, was what can be considered a true ‘herd’ “, describes Brasil de Fato.

Among the alterations, number four (4) authorizes the regularization of rural properties within indigenous territories, a measure that alters the “Declaration of Recognition of Limits” and allows the invasion, exploration and even commercialization of indigenous territories not yet approved.

Another regulation is number 13, which authorizes the reduction of the distance between populated areas and those in which pesticides are fumigated.

The practice is considered illegal in most countries in Europe and, for more than 10 years, it is also responsible for the contamination of residents of rural communities, indigenous people, quilombolas [ancestral rural communities of Afro-descendants] and even schools in rural areas.

In early March, IBAMA President Eduardo Bim signed an internal resolution that restricted the access of the agency’s servers to the press.

The following month, after the impact of IBAMA’s action against garimpeiros [illegal artisanal miners] operating in indigenous territories in Pará, Salles fired IBAMA’s director of environmental protection, Olivaldi Azevedo, and two other officials who were leading the inspections: Hugo Loss and René Luiz de Oliveira.

The position of director of environmental protection was given to the colonel of the São Paulo Military Police (PM), Olimpio Ferreira Magalhães. The other two posts were filled by PM reserve colonel Walter Mendes Magalhães Júnior and server Leslie Tavares, a former IBAMA environmental analyst in Manaus, who was investigated in 2019 for returning to the garimpeiros the vessels that were seized when they were doing their illegal activities.

In addition, the decree opened the possibility for positions to be filled by people from outside the public entity. The result was that of the five ICMBIO managements, only one is occupied by an agency career agent. The other four are commanded by military police.

The alteration is another example of infralegal change, because it did not need to go through the Legislative, and it went into effect immediately.

Illegal appropriation, deforestation and amnesty

Brazil de Fato reports that after intense pressure from social movements and Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs) that launched a campaign denouncing Salles’ actions, some measures fell back.

One was the ‘grilagem’ bill [use of false documents to forge ownership and claim land tenure]. It was previously voted on as MP 910, but the measure was not voted on within the deadline and expired.

Sponsored by the Parliamentary Front for Agriculture (FPA), Bill 2633/2020, promotes the regularization of illegally occupied public lands.

According to analysts, in practice it will legalize the ‘grilagem’, in addition to expanding deforestation in the Amazon and violence in the countryside.

The infralegal reform aimed at deforestation permits for the Atlantic Forest (mata Atlántica), cited by the minister at the famous meeting, also did not pass.

Issued through dispatch 4,410 / 2020, the proposal also opens a gap for owners who were fined for deforestation to be granted amnesty. The Minister canceled the office dispatch but it can return to the agenda.

What is to come against the Amazon

Despite the extremely negative repercussions of what Minister Salles said during the meeting and the political and health crisis facing Brazil, the Bolsonaro regime has not slowed down its actions against the Amazon, much less the approval of measures to “simplify” and “deregulate” environmental laws.

“Last May 25, Bolsonaro (without political parties) transferred from the Ministry of the Environment, of Ricardo Salles, to the Ministry of Agriculture, of Tereza Cristina, the competence to make public forest concessions at federal level”, Brasil de Fato quotes. .

Another example of the Bolsonaro regime’s negative action against the Amazon is the preparation for a vote on the environmental licensing bill. The fourth version, which was processed in the Chamber 15 years ago, written by the deputy Kim Kataguiri (DEM-SP), was criticized for proposing an even greater relaxation of the rules for building permits.

PL 3729 of 2004 aims to give ‘carte blanche’ for each state to define, independently, what the rules of its licensing processes will be. The text does not foresee environmental compensations for indirect impacts caused by the ventures.

«The PL withdraws from the Chico Mendes Institute (ICMBIO) the power to veto ventures. Another controversial item is that it has been attributed to the Rural Environmental Registry (CAR) of the farmers the same weight of an environmental license”, denounces Brasil de Fato.