Brazil’s Trump – Deny COVID, Open Public Rainforests to Exploitation

From Mongabay.com

Brazil’s President, Jair Bolsonaro, is considered the Donald Trump of Latin America. Like Donald Trump, even after contracting COVID-19, he continued to marginalize if not outright deny the severity of the disease, even as Brazil’s coronavirus current infection rates and deaths are second only to the devastation in India. As of this writing, there have been almost 14 million cases of infection and close to 425 thousand deaths. Hospitals, funeral homes/morgues and medical staff were/continue to be woefully underprepared for the disease, which is surging once again. A major vaccination effort there only began this month.

Even governors and mayors in Bolsonaro’s own party are railing against his lackadaisical approach to the pandemic. Bolsonaro’s term as President will continue through 2022, and many in his country worry that Brazil cannot survive his populist, science-denying and mythology-based rule. 

But Bolsonaro’s policy-directed damage to Brazil is hardly limited to COVID malfeasance – with two-thirds the US population, Brazil was the next country (after the US) to cross the 400 thousand deaths-from-COVID threshold; his environmental policies have resorted to so much deforestation (mostly through massive burn-downs followed by heavy equipment clearing), that the Amazon rainforest became a net CO2 polluter as opposed to a net oxygen generator. Indigenous tribes, deep within Amazonia, are being ignored as they protest the seizure and/or destruction of their long-standing habitats. Logging, farming and mining interests trumped environmental sustainability and claims from indigenous peoples.

At first, Bolsonaro effectively told the rising voices from the international community that chastised his exploitive policies that what was happening in Brazil was none of their business, even as smoke from massive fires (very visible from space) wafted into neighboring countries. He tried to blame natural causes, but that thin excuse fell on deaf ears. He said Brazil did not owe the international community anything. But environmental cacophony resonated within his own nation as well. The inherent racism in sacrificing indigenous peoples was hardly a popular policy.

So Bolsonaro relented, cut back on the deforestation effort and pledged to support more prudent ecologically friendly policies going forward. Words. In practice, the effort to accelerate support environmental policies was profoundly under-funded and the effort to open public lands for private exploitation continued. Much of this transition of public lands for public use was simply illegal, with a wink-wink from government officials. So Bolsonaro is currently championing proposed legislation that would make such private use of public assets legal. The world is taking notice again.

Because the UK is a major importer of Brazilian foodstuffs, the May 5th BBC.com explains the efforts of one sector in the UK to halt this legalization effort: “Nearly 40 UK food businesses have threatened to stop sourcing products from Brazil over proposed land reforms… An open letter from the group calls on Brazil's legislature to reject a bill which could legalise the private occupation of public land… The letter said the proposal could accelerate deforestation in the Amazon… The bill is being considered just months after Brazil pledged to end illegal logging…

“Under the leadership of right-wing President Jair Bolsonaro, the level of deforestation in the Amazon is reported as being the highest since 2008… This year alone around 430,000 acres of the Amazon have been logged or burned, according to the Monitoring of the Andean Amazon Project... The vast majority of land is cleared either to graze cattle for beef exports, or to grow soy, which goes in to animal feed around the world.

“At a summit in April hosted by US President Joe Biden, Mr Bolsonaro declared that Brazil would end illegal logging. The letter [from UK food business, noted below] says these measures ‘run counter’ to this ‘narrative and rhetoric.’

“The new law would allow land that has been illegally occupied after 2014 to be put up for sale. This would potentially allow illegal occupants to buy it… Similar controversial measures were first put forward in a different bill last year, but were withdrawn after more than 40 organisations made the same threat over supply chain sourcing.” 

The United States does not remotely import agricultural goods, lumber or petroleum products from Brazil at the level that European nations do – at least not yet, but our drought reality could change that – so most our concerns are related to climate change issues, only recently prioritized by the Biden administration. But what is happening in Brazil clearly not have an impact limited to that country, a reality that faces every other major emitter of greenhouse gasses – including the United States – where environmental failures anywhere on earth are often suffered… everywhere.

I’m Peter Dekom, and a modern world of shared environmental disasters and potential new pandemics mandates a level of global cooperation, even between hostile nations, that has never yet been achieved… but must be if we are to survive.