40 The Americas The EconomistAugust 31st 2019
2Bello Playing with fire
P
ictures of firesraging in the rain-
forest. A social-media storm in which
#AmazonIsBurning dominated what
passes for the global conversation. A war
of words in which Emmanuel Macron,
France’s president, branded as a liar his
Brazilian counterpart, Jair Bolsonaro,
who in turn accused Mr Macron of colo-
nialism and mocked his wife’s looks. An
offer of $22m from the g7 countries to
help fight the fires, which Mr Bolsonaro
rejected unless Mr Macron ate his words.
It has been an extraordinary ten days for
Brazil. Through the smoke, two things
are clear: Mr Bolsonaro’s policies are
profoundly destructive of the Amazon
rainforest, and deterring him will take
much more subtlety abroad and more
determination from opponents and even
allies at home.
A former army captain of far-right
views, Mr Bolsonaro won Brazil’s presi-
dency last year partly on a platform of
reviving a moribund economy by sweep-
ing away left-wingery and green regu-
lation. He promised to end fines for
violations of environmental law, shrink
the protected areas that account for half
of the Brazilian Amazon and fight ngos,
for which he has a visceral hatred. In
office, his government has gutted the
environment ministry and Ibama, the
quasi-autonomous environmental
agency. Six of the ten senior posts in the
ministry’s department of forests and
sustainable development are vacant,
according to its website. The government
talks of “monetising” the Amazon but
sabotaged a $1.3bn European fund that
aims to give value to the standing forest.
Ranchers, illegal loggers and settlers
in the Amazon have taken all this as
encouragement to power up their chain-
saws. Deforestation in the first seven
months of this year rose by 67% com-pared with the same period last year, ac-
cording to inpe, the government’s space
research agency. Mr Bolsonaro called
inpe’s data lies and fired its director. His
initial reaction was, preposterously, to
blame the fires on ngos.
Mr Bolsonaro’s approach is driven by
prejudice and nationalism. “He deeply,
ideologically, believes that environmen-
talism is part of a left-wing view of the
world,” says Matias Spektor, at Fundação
Getulio Vargas, a university in São Paulo.
Brazil’s armed forces have long thought
that outsiders have designs on the Ama-
zon, and that they must develop it or risk
losing it. The generals in Mr Bolsonaro’s
cabinet, usually a force for restraint, are
not on this issue. Behind his tirades
against Mr Macron is the expectation that
Brazilians will rally round the flag. That is
why the world needs to tread carefully.
Mr Bolsonaro is right about some
things. Mr Macron was high-handed in
discussing the Amazon at the g7 without
inviting Brazil. While the world has a
legitimate interest in the rainforest’s fate,
it doesn’t own it (though French Guianahas a chunk). Mr Bolsonaro is right, too,
that fires were worse in some past years.
Many maps exaggerate their extent.
Brazil has some of the world’s most
stringent controls on deforestation.
From 2005 these slowed the forest’s
destruction dramatically, before they
were undermined by budget cuts and
now by Mr Bolsonaro.
Like Janus, his government faces two
ways on this issue. Brazilian diplomats
abroad present their country as commit-
ted to halting deforestation. At home, the
president winks at those who practise it.
That is why it is important to hold his
government to its word.
“The main issue is how to get to a
rational discussion about what’s happen-
ing,” says Marcos Jank of the Centre for
Global Agribusiness at Insper, a universi-
ty in São Paulo. That is something Brazil’s
modern farmers want. They persuaded
Mr Bolsonaro not to pull out of the Paris
agreement on climate change, or abolish
the environment ministry. They fear
consumer boycotts and the eupulling
out of a recently concluded trade agree-
ment, as Mr Macron threatened. In fact,
both would have limited effect. Mr Jank
notes that 95% of Brazil’s $102bn-worth
of agricultural exports are commodities
that don’t go directly to consumers; 60%
go to Asia. But Brand Brazil has certainly
been damaged.
Politically, too, Mr Bolsonaro is on
treacherous ground. Although Brazilian
nationalism should not be under-esti-
mated, most Brazilians worry about
climate change. As the president spoke
on television on August 23rd about the
fires, there were pot-banging protests in
prosperous parts of cities, which helped
to elect him. But halting his scorched-
earth practices will require organised
political action as well as protest.How not to save the Amazonto an eventual claim by a community. Un-
certainty about property rights turns much
of the coast into “no-man’s land”, says Juan
Esteban Carranza, head of the Cali branch
of Colombia’s central bank. In the absence
of rules, 10,000 prior consultations are tak-
ing place across Colombia, a large share of
them in the Pacific. Peru, also a signatory to
the iloconvention, has two.
No one knows how many people live on
collectively owned land (communities are
supposed to conduct their own census, but
many fail to). Perhaps 1.5m people in the
wider region are affected by Ley 70. Indirectcosts are felt across the country. Colom-
bia’s president, Iván Duque, wants to create
a port and duty-free zone in Chocó plus
roads to coffee-growing areas as part of his
national development plan. But the gov-
ernment has no way to acquire the land.
Firms that would benefit from proxim-
ity to the ports, such as food importers, set
up instead in Cali, 100km (60 miles) inland.
Companies “are always on alert” about po-
tential land claims and consultations, says
Alexander Micolta, the president of Buena-
ventura’s chamber of commerce.
Demands for consultations are block-ing a project from 2006 to widen to four
lanes the congested road from Buenaven-
tura to Cali. A proposal in 2012 to build a
power line to the city from a dam 60km
away fell apart. Hundreds of wooden huts
appeared along the planned route. Their
owners demanded 30m pesos ($10,000) per
hut. These and other demands raised the
scheme’s projected cost by 83%.
Mr Duque promises to mitigate the ef-
fects of both Ley 70 and prior consultations
by issuing rules next year. But they need
the approval of ethnic communities. Some
do not share his idea of progress. 7