Bolsonaro’s rule of Brazil in recent years has not only had socio-economic effects on the country (increase in poverty, rise of racist and fascist groups, widening of the gap between the poor and the rich, etc.) but also great environmental effects which do not only affect Brazil but also the whole world. Brazil is almost entirely covered in its northwestern part by the largest oxygen lung that the Earth currently has, the Amazon rainforest. The oxygen cradle of South America for years was under the protection of the Brazilian governments, under pressure of course from the international community, to prevent its destruction on the altar of industry. All this unfortunately had to change when President Bolsonaro was elected, and potentially recording the most anti-environmental policy for the Amazon Forest.
Parts of the land of Amazon are highly coveted – rich in gold and minerals. These lands have long been in the sights of illegal miners, and while mining activity decreased in the past due to presidential decrees and international agreements, in the past four years under President Jair Bolsonaro, it’s hit new highs. The region is experiencing an illegal gold rush. The activity of illegal mining not only damages the flora and fauna of the Amazon but also exhausts the inhabitants of the regions by pushing them several times away from their area. Mining expansion threatens to destroy settlements and fumes from the machinery increase disease.
According to the BBC there are estimated to be around 20,000 illegal miners operating in the field, spurred on by Bolsonaro’s claims that the Amazon is rich in resources and local people need to be able to benefit from that.
Mining is not the only problem the Amazon faces at the moment. Bolsonaro’s policies directly allowed through deforestation and through fires the shrinking of the forest. According to Le Monde in just one year, more than 13,000 km2 of Amazon have been razed, based on data transmitted by the National Institute of Space Research (INPE), the equivalent of the area of a country like Lebanon, and more than 120 times the size of a city like Paris. Since President Bolsonaro came into office, he abolished the institutions responsible for protecting the environment, contributing to the ecological destruction of the planet.
The newly elected President of Brazil, Luiz Inacio Lula Da Silva, must face the whole situation regarding the ecological destruction of the Amazon. Lula’s administration has promised to tackle first of all the deforestation. True to his word, he appointed Marina Silva, an advocate against Amazon’s deforestation, as the head of the country’s environment ministry. The appointment of Silva does not show only dedication to their goal, but it aims to win the trust of the region’s people since Silva is one of them, born in the Amazon rainforest.
The pair, by having the people on their side, can make the protection of the Amazon rainforest a priority and clash with Brazil’s powerful agribusiness sector. The deforestation of Amazon had a double goal, on one hand the wood industry could lay their hands in the areas of wood provided by the rainforest and on the other hand the creation of fields for raising animals and fodder. The agribusiness sector is among the strongest in Brazil and they will not go down easily since they invested due to Bolsonaro’s policies and blind eye, in the area. The new administration is likely to also face strong resistance from Congress, where lawmakers aligned with the agribusiness and farming sectors.
Brazil’s new administration’s willingness to protect the Amazon is undoubtable, yet is it just their responsibility to care about the biggest rainforest of the world?
The defense of the Amazon rainforest is not something that only falls to Mr. Lula and Ms. Silva. The difficulties that the duo will find in front of them are obvious, and this is where the international community had better show its support. In case the support of the international community does not become visible, President Lula will have difficulty and possibly even lose some of the upcoming battles he has to fight with illegal loggers, miners and land grabbers. The enemies of the Amazon Forest are not like those of the early 2000s, on the contrary they have evolved from individual adventurers to powerful networks tied to business interests that reflect the reality based on the stock market.
The government so far plans to strengthen federal agencies dealing with rainforest protection and create a new police unit specifically to deal with forest-related criminal gangs. Lula’s administration also reactivated the Amazon fund, a program that aims to tackle deforestation but was inactive during Bolsonaro’s presidency. Norway, the major donor of the fund, announced that the amount of 600 million dollars is ready to help in the effort to completely combat deforestation in the Amazon until 2030. As Norwegian Minister of Climate and Environment Espen Barth Eide mention “The Amazon Fund gives the international community a great opportunity to contribute.”
The German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier on his official visit to Brazil has taken a delegation to the Amazon rainforest to help support the new Brazilian government’s environmental agenda as DW mentions. The reason behind this action is to show how important the protection of the Amazon rainforest is, not just for Brazil, but for the entire planet. The German government released €35 million ($36,8 million) for the Amazon Fund when Lula took office as a gesture of support to the Brazilian President’s environmental policy.
The international community is aware of the importance of turning Brazil’s climate policy around now. But it is also clear the difficulties the new president will face. The right-wing parties have a majority in Brazil’s National Congress, and Lula needs to appeal to them if he wants to achieve anything. The support Brazil receives from the international community will largely determine the future of the Amazon. The countries of the West – which are the ones that seem to show a greater environmental sensitivity – if they really want to support the saving of the Amazon, they should not just help financially but clash with financial networks that have interests in the deforestation of the tropics forest. Time is already running backwards for the Amazon Forest and our planet.
Amazon it is not the only thing that Brazil is aiming to protect. Brazil can lead the South-South cooperation on rainforest protection. Nowadays, in the post-Bolsonaro era, Brazil may lead climate change mitigation by acting as a stabiliser of global ecological balance, playing a critical role in tackling climate change because of the potential of the Amazon Forest to remove tons of CO2 from the atmosphere. In favour of this understanding, in November 2022 Brazil signed a three-sided pact with the Democratic Republic of Congo and Indonesia aimed to protect the tropical rainforest: it is particularly relevant because these countries, that highly contributed to deforestation in the last decades, still cover by themselves more than a half of the remaining tropical forests around the world, being critical for environmental stability.
The three States are defining the details to create a strategic alliance called ‘Opec for rainforests’, in order to coordinate the efforts towards forest conservation: despite the unfortunate name, that recalls the oil cartel which throughout the years has played a relevant role in climate change, the goal of this pact is to reach a shared cooperation on bioeconomy (entailing trade facilitation) and sustainable management, conservation and restoration of tropical ecosystem. The three developing countries joint together a massive action to curb deforestation, recognising the importance of this ecosystem for the benefit of the planet and future generations; an interesting point is the focus on indigenous communities, understanding the need of consulting them to find solutions that take into consideration their ancestral knowledge. In the long-term perspective, the pact should be extended to other countries, such as those belonging to the Amazon block or Cambodia, for encouraging conservation through a reshaping of the carbon markets and finance that is sustainable thus in line with the UN climate and biodiversity talks.
The trilateral project has been however criticised for representing a vague political compromise based on sharing of good practices and common knowledge instead of having the effective capacity to tackle climate change. It allows Brazil, DRC and Indonesia to make proposals over carbon emissions affecting forests and carbon finance, but it lacks binding provisions committing the States to, for example, restore deforested public lands or create a green restoration corridor (these measures were suggested by the Scientific Panel for the Amazon during the COP27). [1] Critics pointed out the fact that this alliance should be considered an attempt of forestry countries to gain a privileged position within the international community for what regards global climate negotiations.
With the common aim of collaborating to increase the role of their tropical forests for the sake of the planet, the pact can be read as an effort towards South-South cooperation among developing countries, representing an innovative form of knowledge exchange that is also strengthening economic ties and political dialogue about climate change. However, the question of how to fund this alliance remains unsolved. In the end, the three rainforest countries will likely need financial aids from the Global North for implementing this plan of action. As a matter of fact, the tripartite commitment emerged within the G20 to encourage developed countries to fund rainforest conservation, also taking into account the availability to reopen the Amazon Fund made by Norway ( as was mention above the fund for backing forest protection, to which Norway has always been a major donor, was shut down by Bolsonaro in 2019). The text of the agreement highlights the need of a “predictable, adequate and easily accessible multilateral funding”, stating that the three countries will work together towards the negotiation of a funding mechanism under the provisions of the Convention on Biological Diversity Framework. [2]
The pact is in line with the promises about fighting climate change made by President Lula, demonstrating the willingness of Brazil to lead the community of developing countries on environmental issues. The OPEC for rainforest could have a beneficial effect on the environmental protection of an essential ecosystem due to its potential to attract foreign funds, but to use it following a Global South approach that takes into consideration local traditions and shared indigenous knowledge. If backed up by developed States, more developing States could join with the aim of adopting durable solutions identified under the pact. However, to effectively reach the common goals, these States must agree on an accountable and transparent funding mechanism, the first step in order to build a stronger commitment involving binding obligations towards tackle of deforestation and rainforest restoration.
[1] https://sumauma.com/en/alianca-florestal-brasil-congo-indonesia-natureza-dinheiro-analise/ [2] https://www.gov.br/en/government-of-brazil/latest-news/brazil-indonesia-and-congo-formed-an-alliance-to-protect-rainforestsBy The European Institute for International Law and International Relations.
