Brazil’s 🦖 Bolsonaro: ‘Exterminator of the Future’ 😨
May 14, 2019
Eight former Brazilian Ministers of Environment issued a warning last week that the government of right-wing President Jair Bolsonaro is in the process of systematically destroying Brazil's environmental protection policies. They say the environmental ministry's powers are being stripped, and that deforestation of the Amazon is on the rise again. Marina Silva, who was the environmental minister under President Lula da Silva, called Bolsonaro an “exterminator of the future.”
After four months in office, Bolsonaro's environmental record has been devastating, Alexander Zaitchik told The Real News Network's Greg Wilpert.
“[There is a] massive wave of illegal incursions throughout the Amazon on two formerly protected lands by loggers, miners, agribusiness interests who are emboldened by the rhetoric coming out of the government, where they just feel like the laws won't be enforced,” Zaitchik said. “The agencies that have been empowered to protect what's what's left of the Brazilian Amazon—and again, we've already lost a fifth of it—are being held back. They're being defunded. They're being reshuffled, put under hostile ministers.”
Zaitchik detailed some of the effects on environmental agencies and infrastructure under Bolsonaro. Ibama, Brazil's Environmental Protection Agency, has lost nearly a quarter of its funds. The conservation agency ICMBO is being staffed by right-wing police officers, and all of its scientists have been fired. The Indian agency FUNAI, which assists Brazil's Indigenous groups, has had 90 percent of its funding withheld. Zaitchik added that what is happening in Brazil is similar to the U.S. under Trump, “where the scientific community is sort of seen as a hostile force.”
The role that the international community plays in terms of influencing Bolsonaro environmental policies will become increasingly important, just as it was in the '90s when Brazil's military dictatorships ramped up deforestation.
“A lot of the Indigenous leaders are going abroad, trying to raise the alarm about what's happening, and you know, they're meeting with government officials. And the governments of Asia and Europe and North America are going to be crucial in making sure that another 20 percent of the forest is not destroyed by the policies that Bolsonaro is putting in place right now,” Zaitchik said. “Scientists tell us that another 20 percent risks triggering this feedback loop called 'dieback' in which the forest will simply collapse, and its systems will no longer be able to sustain themselves.”
https://therealnews.com/stories/brazils-bolsonaro-exterminator-of-the-future