Brazil's Jair Bolsonaro is devastating indigenous lands, with the world distracted

[Yo_Mama_Been_Loggin]

The Amazon fires of 2019 drove the greatest single year loss of Brazilian forest in a decade. But with the world in the grip of a pandemic, forest loss in 2020 is already on track to dwarf the devastation of a year earlier. In April 2020 alone, 529 square kilometres of forest was destroyed – an increase of 171% on April 2019.

And worse may be on the way. In order to clear deforested land for farming, felled trees are burned. According to Ane Alencar, director of the Department of Science at the Institute of Environmental Research of the Amazon, “this was the main ingredient of the 2019 fire season, a story that could be repeated in 2020”.

The smoke that engulfed cities in Brazil during the 2019 Amazon fires caused widespread breathing problems. As cases of COVID-19 grow by the day – even in remote areas of the Amazon – Brazil risks exacerbating the public health crisis and causing lasting harm to the forest and indigenous communities.

Emboldening illegal activity

On May 22, the Federal Justice ordered the government to establish bases for environmental inspectors in hotspots of felling and burning. These are areas in the Amazon where 60% of all deforestation occurs.

This was intended to restrict the criminal market that drives illegal logging and mining, but also to help reduce the spread of the virus to indigenous people in the region.

https://www.yahoo.com/news/brazil-jair-bolsonaro-devastating-indigenous-080904418.html

[Mickju]

1. They used to call the Amazon Rainforest the lungs of the Earth.

What will we call it now? This is really scary.