20 | New Scientist | 9 April 2022
News
Analysis Environment
Lawlessness prevails in the Amazon Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro
has systematically undermined institutions meant to protect the rainforest,
fuelling a sharp increase in deforestation, reports Luke TaylorAS A regional coordinator at Brazil’s
National Indian Foundation
(Funai), Jussielson Gonçalves
Silva was tasked with protecting
Indigenous people and forests in
the western state of Mato Grosso.
Instead, he and two other Funai
officials were leasing Indigenous
reserves to cattle ranchers for
kickbacks worth up to $190,000
a month, according to Brazil’s
federal police, who arrested the
ex-navy officer on 17 March.
Gonçalves Silva is one of the
many military officials who have
been appointed to environmental
agencies under President Jair
Bolsonaro. The aim is to obstruct
their work from the inside, says
Suely Araújo at civil society
network the Climate Observatory
in São Paulo. “This case is symbolic
of the growing illegality and
impunity in the Amazon under
Bolsonaro,” she says.
Deforestation has soared since
Bolsonaro took office in 2019.
Another 13,235 square kilometres
of the Amazon rainforest were
lost in 2020-21, up 22 per cent
from the previous year and the
highest amount since 2006.
Conservationists largely blame
the right-wing president, who
has stripped back environmental
protections, publicly endorsed
development of the Amazon
and criticised environmental
institutions. “We are losing
control,” says Araújo, a former
president of Ibama, Brazil’s
environment agency.
Accelerating deforestation has
proved deadly for Indigenous
people, many of whom have been
killed in violent clashes with
loggers. It has led to the loss of
wildlife, and is also accelerating
global warming, say ecologists.
They predict that the Amazon
will eventually reach a tipping
point where it shifts from a
lush rainforest to a more openHE
LDER
FARIA/GETT
Y^ IMAG
ESCattle ranching
is a major driver
of deforestation13,235
Square kilometres of Amazon
rainforest lost in 2020-21ecosystem resembling a savannah.
When that shift will occur is
uncertain. But many researchers
agree that Bolsonaro is bringing
the date forward by weakening
Brazil’s environmental bodies,
which has allowed organised crime
groups to make mass land grabs.
Funai was founded to protect
Brazil’s Indigenous groups – many
of whom are uncontacted – and,
in turn, the country’s forests, as
the fate of the two are intertwined.
But Bolsonaro has obstructed
these institutions legally and
made them impotent by slashing
their budgets and filling them with
military appointments who share
his pro-development agenda, says
Araújo. “Institutions like Funai
have almost been destroyed,” she
says. “They are being managed
by people that are against the
very proposals of the institution.”
The arrest of Gonçalves Silva
is the latest scandal to indicate
that Funai has been tainted by
politics. In January, Indigenous
rights organisation Survival
International obtained leaked
documents suggesting that the
agency discredited evidenceof the existence of a previously
unknown uncontacted tribe.
A Funai spokesperson said
that the foundation “clarifies
that it does not support any type
of illicit conduct and is at the
disposal of the police authorities
to collaborate with the
investigations. The foundation
also informs that the head of
regional coordination was
dismissed from the position.”
As Bolsonaro has weakened
the institutional guardians of the
rainforest, his anti-conservation
rhetoric has encouraged land
grabbing for cattle ranching, soya
bean cultivation and illegal gold
mining, says Erika Berenguer, an
ecologist studying the impact of
deforestation at The Sustainable
Amazon Network. Guns and
murders over land disputes are
increasingly common as a sense of
impunity in the rainforest grows.
Illegality has become so
prevalent that if a new Brazilian
president is elected in October,
they will need to take actions akin
to a peace process if they want to
save the Amazon, says Adriana
Ramos at Brazilian human rights
and conservation group the
Socio-Environmental Institute.
“Imagine a region that already has
a history of Indigenous leaders
and environmentalists shot in
land conflicts and then add a lot
more guns,” says Ramos.
According to conservation
group WWF, over 90 per cent
of deforestation of the Brazilian
Amazon is illegal, but Bolsonaro
is pushing to fast-track a series of
bills that would make much of that
lawful. Ahead of the COP26 climate
summit in 2021, Brazil pledged
to reach zero illegal deforestation
by 2028. The promise was largely
seen by experts as hollow.
“This is a game that Bolsonaro
is playing,” says Carlos Nobre
at the University of São Paulo. ❚A soya bean
plantation in Mato
Grosso, BrazilHERB
ER
T^ PICTURES
/GETTY^ IMAGES