Amazon Deforestation Up 64% YOY In Q1 2022 As Bolsanaro Gears Up For Next Election Cycle
Since taking office in 2019, far-right Brazil President Jair Bolsonaro has presided over record levels of deforestation in the Amazon rainforest. He loosened laws and regulations meant to protect the forest from landgrabbers, miners and loggers who’ve declared open season on the Amazon and the Indigenous peoples who live within it. He pursued a ruthless policy of extraction and demolition. He made Brazil a pariah on the world stage, earned the title as the planet’s most dangerous climate change denier, and generated charges that he is guilty of crimes against humanity. That predictable record of destruction put the future of the Amazon rainforest on the ballot in Brazil’s looming October presidential election, in which Bolsonaro is seeking a second term.
The stakes for the forest and the planet could not be higher. Bolsonaro is currently trailing leftist former President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva in early election polls, fueling hopes among environmentalists, Indigenous leaders and his opponents that the world’s largest rainforest — the preservation of which is vital to stave off global climate catastrophe — may soon get a chance to breathe and even begin to recover.
The nightmare scenario, though, is a Bolsonaro victory that could unleash four more years of destruction that the Amazon simply cannot withstand. “If Bolsonaro remains in the power of presidency, it’s hopeless in terms of the environment,” said Marcio Astrini, the executive secretary of the Climate Observatory, a São Paulo-based environmental organization. “There will be more deforestation. The Amazon will fast forward to its collapse point.”
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After sharp declines over the first decade of the 21st century, rates of Amazonian deforestation began to rise even before Bolsonaro won the 2018 election. But the ardent climate change denier’s policies have played a direct role in speeding up destruction, experts say. Bolsonaro gutted environmental agencies, rolled back protective regulations and cut funding for enforcement. By last July, Brazil’s two main environmental enforcement agencies had amassed a backlog of 17,000 unpaid fines, Reuters reported, that was largely due to administrative changes made at Bolsonaro’s request that have turned the process of adjudicating and collecting those penalties into a bureaucratic nightmare. Bolsonaro fired officials who have reported deforestation figures he doesn’t like. And he has pushed for the passage of new laws and regulations to open the forest to illegal land grabbing, timber exploitation and mining interests.
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https://www.huffpost.com/entry/bolsonaro-lula-amazon-rainforest-brazil-election_n_6257353ce4b0e97a351a4430
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