Bolsonaro Announces Creation Of "Amazon Council" - Whatever That Is . . . .
Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro this week announced the creation of an Amazon Council, coordinated by Vice President Hamilton Mourão, a retired general and supporter of Amazon mining development. A new Environmental Police force, utilizing state military police, will also be created. Both actions may have been sparked by escalating international criticism and growing economic problems for the country’s agribusiness sector caused by the leader’s failure to protect the Amazon rainforest.
The new Amazon Council, whose exact functions remain vague for now, will oversee “the activities of all the ministries involved in the protection, defense and development, and sustainable development of the Amazon.” Its purview will include the Environment Ministry led by Bolsonaro appointee Ricardo Salles, who spent all of 2019 dismantling the ministry’s capacity to monitor deforestation, enforce environmental laws, and fine offenders; while replacing experienced, qualified staff with retired police officers; and blaming Greenpeace and other NGOs for environmental disasters. Salles — via his unfounded accusations of financial irregularities among NGO recipients — also precipitated the suspension in August of the billion dollar Amazon Fund set up by Norway, Germany and other developed nations to fund firefighting brigades and sustainable projects aimed at reducing deforestation.
The new council’s creation may have been sparked by warnings to Bolsonaro before and during this month’s Davos Economic Forum: Large investment fund managers caution that they could be forced to pull out of Brazil, under pressure from shareholders increasingly worried about the climate crisis — especially if the government continues downplaying deforestation in the Amazon while also gutting environmental laws.
Brazilian producers and exporters of soy and meat are also very worried about the negative international effects of government environmental policies on their foreign markets. Public concern was especially heightened by last August’s Amazon fires, with consumers in the EU, who demand sustainability, particularly riled. Under Bolsonaro, Brazil has seen the highest Amazon deforestation rate in 11 years, while there is strong evidence that 2019’s fires were set by land grabbers and producers converting rainforest to agribusiness lands. At Davos, Paulo Guedes, Brazil’s Finance Minister, did nothing to help Brazil’s image as he blamed “the poor” for deforestation, “because they want to eat.” He offered no evidence of this claim.
EDIT
https://news.mongabay.com/2020/01/brazils-bolsonaro-creates-amazon-council-and-environmental-police-force/
