Unfortunately, one of the negative effects of the coronavirus pandemic should not be forgotten the uncontrolled increase in deforestation in the Amazon. In April, the area of virgin forest deforested in Brazil (ie 60% of the total area) grew by 171% compared to last year, according to the Institute of Man and the Environment of the Amazon (Imazon). The figure is the highest in the last ten years.
At this rate, 2020 thousand sq km of forest will disappear in 14, an area about as large as that of the Campania region. An aggravation even compared to 2019, the first year of the Bolsonaro government, when deforestation reached 9.165 sq km, an area that is as large as Umbria. The increase was already then 85% compared to the previous year, according to data from the National Institute of Space Research (Inpe).
On the other hand, Bolsonaro has never hidden his intention to economically exploit the natural wealth of the Amazon forest, through mining and intensive agriculture, policies that put not only the ecosystem at risk, but also indigenous communities. "Where there are indigenous reserves, there is wealth underground," the then-presidential candidate said during an election campaign in 2018.
When he became president, Bolsonaro promised he would not grant even "an inch" more land to indigenous communities: "Indios cannot remain in their own land like a prehistoric human being". Affirmations that conflict with the Brazilian constitution which recognizes the rights of traditional peoples to pursue their own ways of life and safeguards their lands.
The government's conniving attitude has effectively paved the way for illegal chainsaws and miners. Fines and checks have collapsed in the first year of government and also the positions at the top of environmental bodies were parceled out to make room for men of confidence and from the army.
The destruction of bulldozers, tractors and trucks used to carry out environmental crimes – an effective form in the fight against forest devastation because it interrupts environmental damage and causes economic losses to criminals – have halved in 2019, as revealed by the investigative site The Intercept.
On the other hand, on April 22, the Minister of the Environment Ricardo Salles said it clearly: "We need an effort in this moment of calm regarding the attention of the media, which only talk about Covid, and go ahead and change the rules and simplify the rules”. It's still: "We don't need Congress. Because the things that need Congress, with the mess that's there, we can't get them approved”. The sentences, pronounced in a Council of Ministers and recorded by television cameras, ended up on all the Brazilian television news on Friday and raised a fuss.
But they only strengthen the sympathy and support for the government in Congress by the so-called “rural bank”, a transversal group of 200 MPs that historically defends the interests of landowners against environmental policies.
La Bolsonaro's bland response to the fires that devastated the Amazon forest in 2019, raising international protests, had already been a clear signal of the intentions of the government which is pushing, among other things, for the approval in Parliament of an amnesty for those who illegally occupy public lands.
An amnesty of this type had already been approved by the previous Temer government, but it concerned the appropriations committed until 2011. Bolsonaro wants to extend the pardon for crimes committed until 2018 even by medium and large landowners.
A law defined as "shameful" by environmentalists. “It is unacceptable that in the midst of the chaos caused by the pandemic, environmental evolutions are on the agenda in Parliament, while the participation of civil society and discussions are limited”, accuses Luiza Lima, of Greenpeace.
Meanwhile worry the advance of the coronavirus among the Indians, which according to the last 2010 census are 818 divided into 305 ethnic groups. The Ministry of Health has recorded 34 deaths and 695 infections among the indigenous populations, but according to a group of NGOs operating in the area, the victims would be 103. All this while throughout the country there have been 16.500 new cases in the last 24 hours.
La little attention to the Indians it also emerged unequivocally in the same ministerial meeting that ended up in all the media when Education Minister Abraham Weintraub said he hated the expression "indigenous peoples" and that there are no privileged peoples. “There is only one people. He can be black, white, Japanese, a descendant of the Indians, but he must be Brazilian".
The environmental damage is revealing itself in all its seriousness given that not even quarantine and social isolation measures will have positive effects on emissions CO2. While in the rest of the world they are decreasing by an average of 6%, the Climate Observatory estimated during the week that in Brazil the increase will be 20% compared to the latest available data from 2018.
All precisely net of the reduction in emissions in the energy sector and industrial production caused by the pandemic. According to the body, which brings together dozens of environmental associations, the reason is precisely the advance of deforestation. From 1,9 billion tons it will go to 2,1/2,3 billion. In the Amazon the increase will be as much as 51%.
“The acceleration of deforestation and emissions directly depend on the actions of the Bolsonaro government to dismantle the control plans on the one hand and stimulate environmental crime on the other”, accuses Marcio Astrini, director of the Climate Observatory.
