Brazil’s environmental record in the first year of President Jair Bolsonaro’s government came in for criticism at the UN environmental COP 25 conference in Madrid.
Brazil was awarded the Climate Action Network’s ironic Colossal Fossil award after a year when, along with China and India, it was described as one of the main opponents of stronger commitments to reduce global warming.
The Network described Bolsonaro as “a walking carbon bomb”. In Brazil itself the Catholic Church’s Pastoral Land Commission (CPT) reported that the number of indigenous leaders murdered in the country was the highest for 11 years.
In a joint statement with more than 100 other Brazilian environmental, Church and human rights organisations, the CPT said that the Amazon rainforest was “being attacked by predatory activities that ignore their disastrous consequences for present and future generations and for the climate of the planet”.
The statement quotes findings from the Brazilian space agency, INPE, which uses satellites to monitor deforestation, that deforestation increased by 91 per cent between August and October 2019.
In August alone, according to INPE, burning in the Amazon rainforest increased by 196 per cent over the same month in 2018, the highest level for nine years. By 2019 the accumulated deforestation amounts to 20 per cent of the original rainforest area, which many scientists regard as a tipping point for the forest’s ability to maintain moisture in the atmosphere.
The Brazilian organisations, while recognising that deforestation and burning in the Amazon region took place before the Bolsonaro government, blame the government for weakening environmental agencies and safeguards, and are calling on other countries to ensure that their agricultural and timber imports from Brazil are “exclusively and strictly legal and certified”. One of Bolsonaro’s campaign pledges was to “develop” the Amazon region.
Meanwhile Catholic groups are supporting programmes to employ some of the hundreds of thousands of Venezuelans who have fled into Brazil from their economically stricken country. Many lack documents and diplomas to prove their skills. The Scalabrini International Migration Network, Jesuit Refugee Service, the Catholic ministry to migrants of the Diocese of Roraima, and Caritas Brazil are collaborating to assist Venezuelans at makeshift refugee camps in Northern Brazil, alongside organisations such as AVSI Brasil, part of the Italy-based AVSI Foundation.
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