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Fears for Amazon after Bolsonaro wins Brazil presidency
PARIS, Oct 29, 2018 (BSS/AFP) – Environmentalists and rights groups
reacted with dismay Monday to the victory in Brazil of president-elect Jair
Bolsonaro, a far-right champion of agribusiness who has threatened to pull
his country from the Paris climate accord.
Bolsonaro, who won 55 percent of the vote in a run-off on Sunday, issued a
series of campaign pledges that left many fearing for the future of the
Amazon, known as “the lungs of the planet”.
He promised to merge Brazil’s agriculture and environment ministries into
one, saying “we won’t have any more fights” over ecological concerns on
deforestation.
“It’s all about downsizing government and getting it out of the way so
investors and big agribusiness landowners and companies can come in and have
a freer hand for more trashing of resources and indigenous rights,” Victor
Menotti, a former director of the International Forum on Globalization, told
AFP.
Bolsonaro, a former army captain, also raised the prospect of building
hydro-electric power stations in the Amazon that would greatly restrict water
access and forcibly remove indigenous communities.
“If (Bolsonaro) decides to move forward with his pledges against the
environment, indigenous peoples and the climate, his fellow citizens will be
the biggest victims,” said Carlos Rittl, executive secretary of the Brazilian
Climate Observatory.
“To increase deforestation and greenhouse gas emissions is to leave each
and everyone of us more vulnerable to an increasing risk of climate
extremes.”
May Boeve, executive director at climate NGO 350.org, warned that a
Bolsonaro presidency posed “a real threat to human rights at home and a risk
to the momentum for climate action abroad.”
Deforestation is responsible for about a fifth of greenhouse gas emissions
and intensifies global warming.
But more than two decades of UN-led efforts to curb the practice have
largely failed, with Earth still losing a wooded area the size of Greece
every year.
The Amazon itself is retreating to the tune of 52,000 square kilometres
(20,000 square miles) — equivalent to the area of Costa Rica — each year,
as agriculture giants saw down trees to make way for vast tracts on which to
graze cattle or grow plants for food and cosmetic products.
– Indigenous community fears –
Bolsonaro, who openly admires Brazil’s former military dictatorship and
shocked many with his derogatory remarks on women, gays and blacks, remained
vague about the environment during campaigning.
He stunned many observers in August by pledging to follow US President
Donald Trump’s lead and pull Brazil out of the 2015 Paris treaty on climate
change, before backtracking days before the run-off.
The Paris deal aims to limit temperature rises to “well below” two degrees
Celsius (36 Farenheit) above pre-industrial levels.
A major report this month highlighted the vital role forests must play in
limiting the impact of greenhouse gas emissions as well as the crucial role
of indigenous people in forest upkeep.
Bolsonaro said in February that he would not give up “one centimetre more”
land to indigenous communities in Brazil — home to around 60 percent of the
Amazon rainforest — who are often threatened when standing up for their
rights.
Brazil is already the deadliest place for environmentalists, which
pressure group Global Witness recording 57 deaths of people protecting land
there last year.
Its annual report on environmentalist deaths said Brazil was already
“actively weakening the laws and institutions designed to protect land rights
and indigenous peoples”.
Boeve said she feared for the indigenous population as Bolsonaro forges
ahead with his development-at-any-price approach.
“The poorest will be the hardest hit by unchecked climate change,” she
said.
“Poor and vulnerable communities in Brazil also suffer most from the
activities that drive climate change — like fossil fuel extraction,
fracking, and deforestation.”
BSS/AFP/RY/1955 hrs