The new explosion of deforestation in the Amazon

 Deforestation in the Amazon, from August 2018 to June 2019, increased by 29.5%, from 7536 km2 to 9765 km2. An increase from August to December 2018 was already forecast. Electoral years are likely to have higher deforestation. In that particular electoral year, one of the favorite candidates, Jair Bolsonaro, adopted a discourse of blatant incitement against the environmental command and control institutions. He publically praised land grabbers and others who deforest as well as illegal gold miners invading indigenous land, signaling to all of them a future of impunity.

  Following Bolsonaro's inauguration, political incitement has surged. Also, efforts to dismantle institutions such as IBAMA (the Brazilian EPA, that previously was already seriously understaffed) and ICMbio(takes care federal preservation units) and the INPE( the Brazilian Spatial Institute that monitors deforestation by satellite). A plethora of norms, decrees, and other legal acts of forest protection were trashed. Threats and violence against environmental civil servants have escalated. The president himself announced he would prohibit the legal destruction of tractors, mining barges, and other deforestation and pollution equipment. 

All this has created even greater obstacles in the daily fight against deforestation, which, in the case of the Amazon, occurs mainly in undesignated public rain forests but also conservation units. Illegal land grabbers are responsible for most of the deforestation. They occupy, speculate on, and sell them, sometimes placing very low-productivity livestock to symbolize the ownership of the appropriated area on public land. 

Analyzing state by state, the hardest hit, as it has been happening for years, is in Pará with 3862 km2 deforested, an increase of 42% over the previous year. In relative terms, the highest percentages of the increase occurred in Roraima and Acre, respectively 216% and 55%. Deforestation in Pará, although in absolute terms, is the highest, with a 41% increase over last year is still 56% below this 2004 peak.

 The case of Amazonas is noteworthy because it is still a carbon-negative state (together with Amapá and Roraima). Nevertheless, now, deforestation is taking place at high speed and intensity. It already reaches 1421 km2 in an increase of 36% compared to last year and 15% compared to the year of the highest deforestation in the Amazon, this century, 2004.

Dismantling environmental institutions

All this coincides with multiple invasions of indigenous land, the pollution of their rivers with mercury, by illegal gold miners, and an idiotic confrontation with donors like Germany and Norway. Civil servants are persecuted at IBAMA(the Brazilian EPA) and IMPE (The Brazilian satellite image monitoring institute) to reduce environmental law enforcement and "break the thermometer" that exhibits to the world the results of these policies. Indigenous leaders are being killed and four environmentalists, voluntary fighters, have been arrested and accused of promoting forest fires, in a grotesque farce by police officers and a judge linked to deforestation interests.  

 This recent deforestation, 95% of it illegal, has not been mainly promoted by modern agribusiness. These are criminal activities incited by president Bolsonaro and favored by his dismantling of federal environmental law and enforcement institutions, are mostly the result of land grabbing, mostly on federal undesignated land, for purely speculative purposes. Agribusiness has much to lose actually from the international uproar at this new outbreak of devastation. An additional 5% of further destruction of the Amazon rainforest can engender irreversible changes affecting the rain regime in the rest of the country and other parts of South America. Floods, desertification, risks to agriculture, extreme winds, invasion of coastal areas by the sea, heatwaves make up the foretold drama of climate change. 

Brazil’s role in climate change and potential benefits in decarbonizing 

On the other hand, decarbonizing actions bring economic opportunities if Brazil is capable of negotiating intelligently the immense environmental services it offers. It has a high potential in low carbon agriculture and renewable energy. Brazil has 60 million hectares of degraded pastures for reforestation, abundant sun, and wind for clean energy, biofuels, and is pioneering low carbon farming techniques. So why all this destruction? Bolsonaro's invectives and gross misinformation intimidate those in his government who understand the equation. Climate change deniers form his first circle of closest assistants, his three sons, the ministers for Foreign Affairs and for the Environment, and his Virginia based guru. 

Brazil is the 7th biggest GHG emitter and very vulnerable to climate change. It can also do a lot about it. Between 2004 and 2012, Brazil managed to reduce its deforestation in the Amazon from 27,000 km2 to less than 5,000 km2, cutting its CO2 emissions by 80%, more than any other country. Now the deforestation rises again, in full swing. How far will it go? Just like Donald Trump, his idol and inspirator, Bolsonaro ignores the climate change reality under his very eyes, notwithstanding its recent extreme displays: the terrible cyclones in Mozambique, affecting three million people or the 46-degree heatwave in Nantes, France. These are warnings of what is coming. 2019 will probably become the warmest year ever experienced by humanity. 

 Bolsonaro shows great antipathy for any kind of environmental concerns. He believes they are all "leftist junk," but who were its pioneers in Brazil? Actually, quite conservative. The military, like Marshal Cândido Rondon, a life in defense of the Indigenous peoples, Major Manuel Archer, who promoted the greatest urban reforestation to date, in the Tijuca massif, in Rio de Janeiro, in the late 19th century, Admiral Ibsen Gusmão. Also, civilians like Paulo Nogueira Batista, Marcelo de Ipanema, who can hardly be considered the "left-paws" of the president's idiosyncratic mythology. No, worrying about climate and biodiversity is not a "communist scheme." It is our responsibility to the generation of our children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren, threatened by the catastrophic consequences that can still be contained but in a closing window of opportunity.