Reducing greenhouse gas emissions has never been a priority for the Brazilian government.
Take its own climate fund, from which about $100,000 was channelled into sanitation measures rather than the mitigation of national carbon emissions. Of course, sanitation is essential to health and wellbeing in our cities, but it is far from a significant source of emissions. The government also slashed the budget of the Institute of the Environment and Renewable Natural Resources (Ibama), the department within the environment ministry responsible for monitoring deforestation. In the first half of 2019, £2.2m was allocated for inspections; last year, the figure was £700,000.
What the government is missing is not cash, but a commitment to the truth. It denied the existence of fires in the Amazon as the flames were burning. Brazilian news is saturated with scandals that show persistent government action to weaken environmental bodies, roll back legislation, and ignore international agreements.
Two years ago, it dismissed the head of the INPE – the National Institute of Space Research – for the simple fact that the institution had compiled data on the rise of deforestation.
Last week, it dismissed the head of the office of the federal police, who had led the largest investigation into the illegal extraction of wood in the history of the Amazon. It has replaced experienced civil servants with individuals without any forestry expertise in several departments, and it intends to effectively shut down ICMBio, Brazil’s foremost institution dedicated to the protection of natural reserves.
To reach a billion-dollar agreement with Bolsonaro’s government at this crucial moment will only strengthen its resolve: it will be a boon for the farmers and land-grabbers who have illegally occupied public forests and indigenous land and send the precisely opposite message to that which is needed in this crucial year for the climate.
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