Bolsonaro and the destruction of the Amazon: a government priority - 07/04/22

By Luiz Marques

In June 2022, indigenous affairs expert Bruno Pereira and the British journalist Dom Philips were two more victimsof a Blitzkrieg conducted by President Jair Bolsonaro against the largest tropical forest on the planet. This war arouses little international reaction, although it is much more threatening to the habitability of the planet than wars currently underway in Ukraine, Yemen, among others. The aggressors' objective is fourfold: 1) the sale of wood; 2) the replacement of the forest by pastures for cattle and by soybean plantations, primarily intended for animal feed; 3) mining; and 4) trafficking in animal species. For Jair Bolsonaro, it is necessary to eliminate everything that opposes the achievement of these goals. This implies invading indigenous lands and terrorizing those who live in and defend the forest, their cultures and their ways of life with attacks of all kinds, including rape and murders. 

On protected indigenous territories invaded by agribusiness and mining, deforestation increased 153% in 2020 compared to the previous year, with more than 98% of it being illegal. Under Bolsonaro, farmers resumed a practice used during the Vietnam war of dropping Agent Orange and other herbicides (glyphosate, 2,4-D) on forests and their inhabitants to accelerate deforestation. According to Naiara Bittencourt, the lawyer for Terra de Direitos, an NGO focused on human rights and environmental struggles, “the expectation is that the use of pesticides for deforestation will intensify in the next period, because it is easier, more accessible, and more consolidated,” given the current lack of governance. For its part, gold mining reduces the forest to a sinister landscape and intoxicates people, fauna, rivers, and soils with lethal and increasing amounts of mercury. As journalist Flávio Ilha warns, “an estimated volume of 100 tons of the neurotoxic metal was used in 2019 and 2020 to illegally extract gold from the region, according to estimates based on an official survey. This gold was exported by Brazil to countries such as Canada, the United Kingdom, and Switzerland.” Fires in the Amazon rainforest have also increased since 2019, prompting reactions, including at an international level. In 2020, according to the National Institute for Space Research (INPE), the Amazon registered 103,161 fires, the highest number since 2017 under then-president Michel Temer.

The ongoing destruction of the Amazon has multiple planetary impacts, including the acceleration of climate change. The Amazon forest and its soils store between 150 to 200 gigatons (Gt) of carbon, equivalent to about 550 to 734 Gt of CO2, (1 GtC = 3.67 GtCO2), that is, about 16 to 22 years of CO2 global emissions from energy generation by burning fossil fuels at the 2019 levels. Having been consistently suppressed, attacked and degraded, the forest is no longer a carbon sink. It is already emitting more CO2 than it is absorbing, also because of higher tree mortality.

Brazil's greenhouse gas emissions (GHG) originate primarily in the 7 states of the Amazon region, which is home to less than 13% of the Brazilian population and produces only 5.5% of the country's GDP. Due to deforestation and forest fires, eight of the ten municipalities that most emitted GHG in Brazil in 2019 are in the Amazon region. São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro, the largest metropolises in the country, occupy only the 5th and 8th position in this list, despite housing many millions of people.

Bolsonaro’s war against the Amazon Forest does not only have economic objectives. It is also the result of a militaristic, anti-democratic, racist, obscurantist, individualistic, predatory ideology, typical of the worldview of rural patriarchy, deeply rooted in the most conservative social sectors.

Bolsonaro represents the resumption of the agenda of the military dictators of the years 1964 to 1985. Aware that he will not be re-elected in October 2022, he is already trying to question the legitimacy of the elections. The international community needs to wake up to the imminent danger of the destabilization of Brazilian democracy and the global climate system. As INPE’s Antonio Donato Nobre states, “the equatorial region in general, and the Amazon in particular, is enormously important for the world's climate.” This is also the case when it comes to the global biodiversity on which we all existentially depend. By directly commanding this war on the biosphere and the global climate, Bolsonaro has become one of the most dangerous men in the world. 

Luiz Marques is Associate Professor at the Department of History at UNICAMP, and Senior Professor at the Ilum School of Science in the National Center for Research in Energy and Materials (CNPEM), both in Campinas, Brazil. He published Capitalism and Environmental Collapse (Springer, 2020).

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References

CORDEIRO, Amanda L. et al., “Fine-root dynamics vary with soil depth and precipitation in a low-nutrient tropical forest in the Central Amazonia”. Plant-Environment Interactions, 16/I/2020.

CORNWALL, Warren, “Illegal gold mines flood Amazon forests with toxic mercury”. Science, 28/I/2022.

FREITAS, Helen, “Fazendeiros jogam agrotóxico sobre Amazônia para acelerar desmatamento”. Reporter Brasil, 16/XI/2021.

GATTI, Luciana et al., “Amazonia as a carbon source linked to deforestation and climate change”. Nature, 15/VII/2021.

ILHA, Flávio, “Explosão do garimpo ilegal na Amazônia despeja 100 toneladas de mercúrio na região”. El País, 20/VII/2021.

LOBATO, Alícia, “Mercúrio do garimpo contamina peixes dentro e fora da Amazônia”. Amazônia Real, 10/XII/2021.