Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro meets Ronaldo Caiado, governor of the state of Goiás on June 5, 2020. Palácio do Planalto / CC BY 2.0
Far-right Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro, who has presided over the world's second worst coronavirus outbreak after the U.S., said Tuesday that he had tested positive for the virus.
<p>The news comes after Bolsonaro has repeatedly dismissed the risk posed by the virus both to himself and others and argued against social distancing measures as a threat to the economy.</p><p>"In my particular case, because of my history as an athlete, in case I were contaminated by the virus I wouldn't need to worry. I wouldn't feel anything or it would be, at most, similar to a little flu, or a little cold," he said during a national television address March 24, as <a href="https://abcnews.go.com/Health/wireStory/ap-explains-bolsonaro-downplayed-virus-fears-months-71663418" target="_blank">The Associated Press reported</a>.</p>
<p>His approach has earned him protests at home and worldwide criticism for allowing the virus to spread in his country, <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/07/world/americas/brazil-bolsonaro-coronavirus.html?auth=login-googl" target="_blank">The New York Times reported</a>. He fired one health minister in April over disagreements about how to respond to the pandemic and forced a second to quit less than a month later. The current health minister is an active-duty general with no medical experience. Brazil has now reported more than 1.6 million confirmed cases and more than 65,000 deaths, falling second only to the U.S. in both categories.</p><p>Bolsonaro took a test for the virus Monday after falling ill with fatigue, muscle pain and a fever. His illness occurred two days after he attended a Fourth of July lunch at the home of Brazil's U.S. Ambassador Todd Chapman, where Bolsonaro and other attendees were pictured sitting side by side without masks. The ambassador and his wife have since tested negative for the virus but are remaining in quarantine.</p>
<div id="30022" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="9e5f6f78f46c6841b83cc759e8840506"><blockquote class="twitter-tweet twitter-custom-tweet" data-twitter-tweet-id="1279475037574176768" data-partner="rebelmouse"><div style="margin:1em 0">Na Embaixada dos EUA, celebrando o 4 de julho, dia da independência americana. https://t.co/CqtgUNxiSL</div> — Ernesto Araújo (@Ernesto Araújo)<a href="https://twitter.com/ernestofaraujo/statuses/1279475037574176768">1593885595.0</a></blockquote></div>
<p>So far, Bolsonaro's diagnosis has not changed his tone. As he announced his test results, he continued to focus on the importance of reopening Brazil's economy.</p><p>"You can't just talk about the consequences of the virus that you have to worry about. Life goes on. Brazil needs to produce. You need to get the economy in gear,″ he said, according to The Associated Press.</p><p>He was also widely criticized on social media for taking off his mask while speaking to reporters about his diagnosis, <a href="https://indianexpress.com/article/trending/trending-globally/brazilian-president-takes-off-mask-after-announcing-he-tested-positive-for-covid-19-6495517/" target="_blank">The Indian Express reported</a>.</p>
<div id="4ed4f" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="512bc5e4d7e023188c02f9b493b51c16"><blockquote class="twitter-tweet twitter-custom-tweet" data-twitter-tweet-id="1280543922331123713" data-partner="rebelmouse"><div style="margin:1em 0">Bolsonaro, who has tested positive for coronavirus, just exposed every journalist to the virus, in case you were wo… https://t.co/cuTpNEwiMd</div> — Brian Tyler Cohen (@Brian Tyler Cohen)<a href="https://twitter.com/briantylercohen/statuses/1280543922331123713">1594140437.0</a></blockquote></div>
<p>Bolsonaro is an ally of U.S. President <a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/tag/donald-trump" target="_self">Donald Trump</a>, <a href="https://www.npr.org/sections/coronavirus-live-updates/2020/07/07/888137097/brazilian-president-jair-bolsonaro-tests-positive-for-coronavirus" target="_blank">NPR reported</a>, who has also been <a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/us-coronavirus-death-toll-2646357716.html" target="_self">criticized</a> for dismissing the severity of the pandemic. Like Trump, Bolsonaro has touted the benefits of hydroxychloroquine for treating the coronavirus, an anti-malaria drug that the Food and Drug Administration <a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/coronavirus-malaria-drugs-2646183392.html" target="_self">has warned</a> against taking for COVID-19.</p><p>But Bolsonaro said his medical team was treating him with the drug on Tuesday and that he was feeling "very well," according to The New York Times.</p><p>Politicians and <a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/tag/public-health" target="_self">public health</a> experts said that Bolsonaro's diagnosis was unlikely to change Brazil's approach to the virus unless he grew seriously ill. The country is currently in the process of reopening.</p>
<p>"My concern is that he will use this to say, 'See, I'm fine, if you catch this you will survive,'" Rio de Janeiro community activist Day Medeiros told The New York Times. "Everything that happens to him has real repercussions in how people behave here. This is really serious."</p><p>But one analyst thought the diagnosis would ultimately harm Bolsoarno's political career.</p><p>"Despite publicly shrugging off his positive test for Covid-19, it marks the beginning of the end of his administration," Robert Muggah, director of Rio-based think tank the Igarape Institute, told <a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2020/07/08/coronavirus-bolsonaros-diagnosis-marks-beginning-of-the-end-for-his-administration.html" target="_blank">CNBC in an email</a>. "It is yet another visible expression of his recklessness and ineptitude."</p>
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The vast scale of native vegetation clearance for industrial soy cultivation in Brazil is apparent in this aerial image of the Cerrado. Jim Wickens Ecostorm / Mighty Earth (2017)
By Chris Arsenault
A first ever study has provided detailed estimates of greenhouse gas emissions across the entire soy producing agribusiness sector in Brazil. The study, published in the journal Global Environmental Change, found that countries and companies in the European Union and China importing soy from Brazil have driven deforestation there, causing a marked increase in greenhouse gas emissions, particularly when the soy came from certain regions.
<p>While <a href="https://news.mongabay.com/2020/06/14-straight-months-of-rising-amazon-deforestation-in-brazil/" target="_blank">deforestation in the Amazon rainforest</a> has garnered global attention, a new wave of precipitous native vegetation loss is being seen in the Cerrado, Brazil's savanna biome, and is a major cause of concern to climate change researchers. Brazil's Cerrado grasslands are being <a href="https://news.mongabay.com/2020/04/we-are-invisible-brazilian-cerrado-quilombos-fight-for-land-and-lives/" target="_blank">cleared of forest</a> at an alarming rate to expand soy plantations — along with ranches — to meet global demand.</p><p>In fact, soy exported from newly cleared lands in some savanna municipalities caused the release of as much as 200 times more greenhouse gas emissions than soy coming from other parts of Brazil, according to the new study, which was conducted by researchers from Germany, together with partners from Spain, Belgium and Sweden.</p><p>The extreme regional disparities in emissions from different parts of the country came as a surprise to the researchers, and could offer a detailed map to policymakers as to where to focus carbon emission reduction efforts to achieve the greatest benefit.</p><p>"One of the big takeaways: there is no average supply chain for soy exports from Brazil. We need to take into account these [major] regional differences," in deforestation, transportation infrastructure, and resulting emissions, said Dr. Neus Escobar, the study's lead author and a post-doctoral researcher at the University of Bonn in Germany.</p>
<img lazy-loadable="true" src="https://assets.rebelmouse.io/eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9.eyJpbWFnZSI6Imh0dHBzOi8vYXNzZXRzLnJibC5tcy8yMzQxNDA2Ny9vcmlnaW4uanBnIiwiZXhwaXJlc19hdCI6MTY0NjUwMTAzNH0.E_nAhS8BixQgvO9eGTajXD7gjMaL7vLSF7kgIOVHGuo/img.jpg?width=980" id="7361c" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="52611a957c75326960085ff694269c68" data-rm-shortcode-name="rebelmouse-image" />
A soy plantation in the Brazilian Cerrado. Alicia Prager / Mongabay.
<p>The new Brazil-wide soy dataset also offers insights into how countries and companies contribute to carbon emissions via deforestation occurring in Brazil. The information could help nations and the soy commodities industry reduce deforestation, and thereby emissions, by fine tuning their supply chains, purchasing decisions and climate change mitigation plans.</p><p>"This gives crucial information to stakeholders to improve environmental performance," Escobar added in an interview with Mongabay. Companies importing Cerrado soy now have been alerted that deforestation there is producing high greenhouse gas emissions, so they can work actively with soy producers to avoid <a href="https://news.mongabay.com/2020/04/for-brazilian-agribusiness-leaving-the-amazon-forested-is-a-problem/" target="_blank">clearing new land for Cerrado plantations</a>, she said.</p><p>Total greenhouse gas emissions from Brazilian soy exports were estimated at 223 million metric tons of carbon dioxide. China was the largest importer of Brazilian soy during the study period which ran from 2010 to 2015, and responsible for 51% of associated carbon dioxide emissions, while the European Union was responsible for 30%.</p><p>But per unit of soy, Europe's carbon footprint from Brazilian imports is larger than China's, the study said. European Union imports were also more likely to cause new deforestation (causing more recent carbon releases), compared to imports from China.</p><p>"This [finding] is surprising because China is a much bigger [soy] importer," Javier Godar, a study co-author and senior researcher at the Stockholm Environment Institute said in an interview with Mongabay. "In the end, Europe is importing a bit more carbon dioxide emissions associated [with] deforestation embedded in soy [production] than China."</p><p>That's because much of the soy consumed in EU countries like Spain and Germany comes from the northern Cerrado where current rates of deforestation are especially high now, Godar explained. China, on the other hand, imports most of its Brazilian soy from the southern Cerrado, which has already converted a lot of its native vegetation to croplands.</p>
<img lazy-loadable="true" src="https://assets.rebelmouse.io/eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9.eyJpbWFnZSI6Imh0dHBzOi8vYXNzZXRzLnJibC5tcy8yMzQxNDEwMS9vcmlnaW4uanBnIiwiZXhwaXJlc19hdCI6MTY0NDk0NDM1M30.xffL1okBH8bwIt-H-vOrnCaEPsbqWZdnhoFRZgoC0GI/img.jpg?width=980" id="7bb22" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="1b4fade01f01d0e0f1b56075634b6201" data-rm-shortcode-name="rebelmouse-image" />
A tractor works to turn deforested land into a soy field in São Desidério, Bahia state, Brazil in 2017. Jim Wickens Ecostorm / Mighty Earth
“Underground Forest”
<p>Lucia von Reusner, campaign director at Mighty Earth, a U.S.-based environmental NGO, said the study is crucial for highlighting deforestation risks in Brazil's Cerrado. "It's one of the world's most biodiverse savannas and a huge concern for people who care about some of the world's most beautiful and threatened species." Also, "Deforestation is one of the biggest drivers of climate change."</p><p>The region has been dubbed an "underground forest" due to the complex root systems of shrubs and small trees, which retain soil and sequester tremendous sums of carbon, she added in an interview with Mongabay. "When the soy industry moves in, all of that is ripped up and burned. All the carbon stored in the roots, trees and soils is burned and released into the atmosphere."</p><p>The Cerrado, dubbed "Brazil's last agricultural frontier" has some of the highest deforestation rates in Latin America, von Reusner said, with only 50% of its native vegetation remaining. The greatest CO2 emissions occurring in the Cerrado during the 2010-15 study period arose in the so-called MATOPIBA region, comprising the states of Maranhão, Tocantins, Piauí, and Bahia. Though the study offered no current deforestation or carbon emission data, MATOPIBA continues to be an agribusiness powerhouse today, a <a href="https://news.mongabay.com/2020/01/communities-in-brazilian-cerrado-besieged-by-global-demand-for-soy/" target="_blank">center of soy production and deforestation</a>.</p><img lazy-loadable="true" src="https://assets.rebelmouse.io/eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9.eyJpbWFnZSI6Imh0dHBzOi8vYXNzZXRzLnJibC5tcy8yMzQxNDA4OC9vcmlnaW4uanBnIiwiZXhwaXJlc19hdCI6MTY1NDU4MzQwM30._JX9XVHy8kPS1rOAdfCBL3QglbmmtFGcTUeqpgSAqv0/img.jpg?width=980" id="6f992" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="0732fb50ab8b612e78f7b69910fc958e" data-rm-shortcode-name="rebelmouse-image" />
This map shows total carbon dioxide emissions embedded in Brazilian soy imports for different regions between 2010 and 2015. The European Union imported 67.6 million tons of greenhouse gas emissions embodied in Brazilian soy, while China imported 118.1 million tons of emissions. Escobar, N. et al.
<img lazy-loadable="true" src="https://assets.rebelmouse.io/eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9.eyJpbWFnZSI6Imh0dHBzOi8vYXNzZXRzLnJibC5tcy8yMzQxNDA5MC9vcmlnaW4uanBnIiwiZXhwaXJlc19hdCI6MTU5OTM0ODc1Mn0.VGim10Le1NnUJpVS4BI1T6rZbaGTM6spTTtw4ayYKyA/img.jpg?width=980" id="1f46c" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="a1549c121c4ab75600e1c9f70e939ce0" data-rm-shortcode-name="rebelmouse-image" />
This graph shows total carbon dioxide emissions embodied by Brazil soy imports in major soy importing countries from 2010 to 2015. Escobar, N. et al.
Examining Total Emissions From Soy
<p>The study is the first to provide an estimate of greenhouse gas emissions across the entire soy sector in Brazil with such a high level of detail. To come to their conclusions, researchers analyzed data from 90,000 different soy supply chains between 2010 and 2015.</p><p>Soy is the most internationally traded agricultural commodity on earth, so analyzing data and strategies to reduce its impact on climate change is crucial for policymakers who want to preserve forests while simultaneously reducing emissions.</p><p>"This study does a good job in noting where along the supply chain we can pinpoint to reduce emissions," said University of California, Santa Barbara, land systems scientist Robert Heilmayr. He researches deforestation in Brazil and was not involved in the recent study.</p><p>The depth of the paper's data helps underscore how the Cerrado is "a new frontier in deforestation," he added, and establishes the importance of including the savanna in any plan to cut greenhouse gas emissions, as compared to other soy producing regions of Brazil.</p><p>In the Amazon rainforest, a moratorium on clearing new lands for soy was launched in 2006, which <a href="https://news.mongabay.com/2015/01/brazils-soy-moratorium-dramatically-reduced-amazon-deforestation/" target="_blank">greatly reduced</a> the conversion of rainforests to make way for new soy plantations. The moratorium continues to work, though <a href="https://news.mongabay.com/2020/06/14-straight-months-of-rising-amazon-deforestation-in-brazil/" target="_blank">Amazon deforestation is increasing</a> due to intense cattle ranching and mining pressures. One study found that the slowing of soy growth in Amazonia, merely <a href="https://news.mongabay.com/2018/11/saving-the-amazon-has-come-at-the-cost-of-cerrado-deforestation-study/" target="_blank">shifted and intensified</a> soy production in the Cerrado.</p><p>Extending the Amazon Soy Moratorium into the Cerrado, via the so-called <a href="https://news.mongabay.com/2018/03/cerrado-manifesto-could-curb-deforestation-but-needs-support-experts/" target="_blank">Cerrado Manifesto</a> or <a href="https://news.mongabay.com/2020/06/14-straight-months-of-rising-amazon-deforestation-in-brazil/" target="_blank">other initiatives</a> — something transnational commodities companies have strongly resisted — could help reduce deforestation related to soy there, Heilmayr and <a href="https://news.mongabay.com/2018/08/more-companies-sign-on-to-cerrado-manifesto/" target="_blank">others contend</a>.</p><img lazy-loadable="true" src="https://assets.rebelmouse.io/eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9.eyJpbWFnZSI6Imh0dHBzOi8vYXNzZXRzLnJibC5tcy8yMzQxNDA5NC9vcmlnaW4uanBnIiwiZXhwaXJlc19hdCI6MTYxMTcxMTA4N30.5PEar6sGahRvQ-vumiP3U0hUOhue29M99R13__oLrDU/img.jpg?width=980" id="bf665" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="a08b7a1bdbff1ed8d3cf020037c02921" data-rm-shortcode-name="rebelmouse-image" />
Data was gathered from 90,000 soy supply chains and shows how the amount of greenhouse gases released from soy production, processing and export varies between Brazilian municipalities, and from year to year. This map indicates carbon dioxide emissions from soy exports from around Brazil between 2010-15. Escobar, N. et al.
Complicated Supply Chains
<p>Deforestation isn't the only cause of soy-related emissions, Escobar explained. Transportation of soy from remote rural production areas to the South American coast especially by truck is another significant driver of carbon emissions.</p><p>In some inland communities in Brazil's center-west region, where poor infrastructure means soy needs to be trucked over long distances, transportation accounts for about 60% of total carbon emissions, especially from export-oriented municipalities in Goiás and Mato Grosso states. This has in part justified vigorous efforts to construct less carbon intensive <a href="https://news.mongabay.com/2018/10/grainrail-2nd-revolution-in-brazilian-agribusiness-and-amazon-threat/" target="_blank">rail lines</a> and <a href="https://news.mongabay.com/2017/01/battle-for-the-amazon-tapajos-basin-threatened-by-massive-development/" target="_blank">industrial waterways</a> connecting Brazil's interior with its coastal ports — though environmentalists worry about the deforestation such infrastructure might bring with it.</p><p>The global trade in agricultural food products more than doubled between 2000 and 2015, from US$600 billion to over US$1,300 billion, according to data from the U.N.'s Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO). But most of the soy exported from Brazil isn't actually eaten by people, explained Reusner; it's primarily used for animal feed or biodiesel.</p><p>To produce enough food for a growing global population, she said transnational companies should incentivize producers to not clear forests for new plantations, but plant soy on land that's already been degraded. <a href="https://news.mongabay.com/2018/05/brazil-has-the-tools-to-end-amazon-deforestation-now-report/" target="_blank">Studies have shown</a> that Brazil has plenty of degraded land to meet global commodity demands, without causing any new deforestation.</p><p>"There is enough degraded land across Latin America to meet the needs of global markets to avoid compromising some of our last remaining ecosystems," she said.</p>From Your Site Articles
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Artists pay homage to the fatal victims of COVID-19 during the performance "Whoever left is someone's love" at Brasília's Catedral on June 15, 2020 in Brasília, Brazil. Andressa Anholete / Getty Images
Brazil officially surpassed 50,600 COVID-19 deaths on Sunday, making the South American nation the second largest coronavirus hot spot after the U.S.
<p><br/></p>
<p>Recent figures put the total number of confirmed cases at more than 1,086,990 and 50,659 deaths. The recovery rate is just above 53 percent, according to <a href="https://www.coronatracker.com/country/brazil/" target="_blank">CoronaTracker</a>. Reuters <a href="https://mobile.reuters.com/article/amp/idUSKBN23S0UB" target="_blank">reports</a> that officials expect the actual numbers to be much higher because of a lack of nationwide testing – typically the country has recorded more than 1,000 deaths per day but registers less over the weekend.</p>
<p>On Monday, the World Health Organization (WHO) also announced the largest single-day increase of cases around the world, with more than 183,000 new cases of COVID-19 having been reported to the WHO in what Director-General Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus described as "easily the most in a single day so far." More than 9 million cases have been reported since the health agency <a href="https://www.who.int/emergencies/diseases/novel-coronavirus-2019/events-as-they-happen" target="_blank">declared</a> the severe respiratory disease a global pandemic in March.</p><p>"Some countries are continuing to see a rapid increase in cases and deaths. Some countries that have successfully suppressed transmission are now seeing an upswing in cases as they reopen their societies and economies," said Adhanom Ghebreyesus in Monday's <a href="https://www.who.int/dg/speeches/detail/who-director-general-s-opening-remarks-at-the-media-briefing-on-covid-19---22-june-2020" target="_blank">press briefing</a>.</p>
<p>"All countries are facing a delicate balance, between protecting their people, while minimizing the social and economic damage. It's not a choice between lives and livelihoods. Countries can do both."</p><p>The BBC <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/amp/world-latin-america-53132225" target="_blank">reports</a> that São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro have seen the largest spikes at 12,500 and 8,800 deaths, respectively. More than 12,000 additional deaths have been reported in the northern states of Amazonas, Pará and Ceará.</p><p>A report <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/article/brazil-coronavirus-cases.html" target="_blank">conducted</a> by the New York Times largely faults government responses and measures for the increase in cases. Brazil President Jair Bolsonaro previously dismissed dangers of COVID-19, calling the virus a "<a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/01/world/americas/brazil-bolsonaro-coronavirus.html" target="_blank">measly cold</a>" and has <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/16/world/americas/virus-brazil-deaths.html" target="_blank">stalled</a> quarantine measures with unclear responses and a chaotic approach. Additionally, the Ministry of Health has not put forth a comprehensive plan and the nation has been <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/article/brazil-coronavirus-cases.html" target="_blank">unsuccessful</a> in importing coronavirus tests, ventilators and other potentially lifesaving equipment.</p>
<p>Brazil is second in cases only to the US, which has reported more than 2.2 million – a 32,411 increase in just one day. There have been over 119,000 deaths across the nation, according to the <a href="https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/cases-updates/cases-in-us.html" target="_blank">Centers for Disease Control and Prevention</a>. According to data compiled by <a href="https://coronavirus.jhu.edu/map.html" target="_blank">Johns Hopkins University of Medicine</a>, over 9 million people have been infected by SARS-CoV-2 with more than 469,000 deaths across the globe. Experts caution that those numbers are likely to be much higher given a lack of worldwide testing, <a href="https://www.cbsnews.com/news/coronavirus-cases-daily-record-world-health-organization/" target="_blank">reports</a> CBS News.</p>
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Amazon river dolphins are classified as endangered by the International Union for Conservation of Nature. Sylvain CORDIER / Gamma-Rapho / Getty Images
By Peter Yeung
A pair of pink Amazon river dolphins emerges for just a moment, arcing above the chocolate brown waters inside the Mamirauá Institute for Sustainable Development, a research facility at the tropical heart of the Brazilian Amazon. Powerful jets of water spray out of their blowholes as these freshwater mammals take in air before submerging.
<p>Moments later the duo reappear on the other side of the Japurá River, playfully dovetailing, and skirting the edge of the <em>várzea</em> rainforest — a seasonal floodplain where, in this part of Amazonia, river levels can rise and fall by up to 12 meters (39 feet) a year, at times opening up vast swathes of rainforest to these graceful swimmers.</p><p>"They are very special creatures," says Natanael dos Santos, a guide working at the Mamirauá Institute. "They are extremely intelligent and can display a complex set of behaviors, even like humans." These skilled, sharp-toothed hunters, often reaching more than eight feet in length, are well adapted to shifting river levels. During highwater periods they penetrate deep into the rainforest using echolocation to search murky pools amid submerged tree roots for prey including dozens of fish species, turtles and freshwater crabs.</p><p>The Amazon river dolphin (<em>Inia geoffrensis</em>) or boto, already <a href="https://www.iucnredlist.org/species/10831/50358152" target="_blank">classified as "endangered"</a> since 2018 by the IUCN, the International Union for Conservation of Nature, is now coming under even more serious threat across Brazil and Latin America. An estimated population in the <a href="https://www.worldwildlife.org/species/amazon-river-dolphin" target="_blank">low tens of thousands</a> is thought to exist in the wild, though counting the animals accurately in the Amazon's murky streams is challenging. Like other river dolphins, the boto communicates with variable whistle tones.</p><p>Occupying the Amazon and Orinoco river basins, which cut across the northern half of the South American continent, these freshwater mammals were historically abundant, and are protected today by Brazilian law; it is illegal to kill them. But for years, poachers have <a href="https://www.researchgate.net/publication/261359911_Insights_on_the_use_of_dolphins_boto_Inia_geoffrensis_and_tucuxi_Sotalia_fluviatilis_for_bait_in_the_piracatinga_Calophysus_macropterus_fishery_in_the_Western_Brazilian_Amazon" target="_blank">targeted the dolphins</a>, using their fatty blubber as bait to catch a carnivorous catfish called <em>piracatinga</em>, which is drawn to the scent of rotting flesh.</p>
<p>In January 2015, under the government of Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff, that chronic criminal behavior led to the introduction of a <a href="https://infoamazonia.org/pt/2015/03/amazon-fishermen-want-to-reduce-time-of-moratorium-on-piracatinga-fish/#!/story=post-12510&loc=-4.389559200000014,-64.55674760000001,7" target="_blank">five-year moratorium</a> on catching <em>piracatinga</em> in order to better protect the dolphins.</p><p>But that moratorium ended earlier this year and has yet to be renewed by the Jair Bolsonaro administration, which is undermining many other of Brazil's environmental laws. Experts warn that the failure to extend it could lead to the extinction of the largest freshwater dolphin in the world — a fate that befell <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2007/aug/08/endangeredspecies.conservation" target="_blank">China's Yangtze river dolphin (</a><a href="https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2007/aug/08/endangeredspecies.conservation" target="_blank"><em>Lipotes vexillifer</em></a><a href="https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2007/aug/08/endangeredspecies.conservation" target="_blank"><em>)</em></a> in 2007, following years of overfishing, pollution and habitat degradation.</p><p>"I believe [the lack of a moratorium] could make them extinct," warns Dr. Vera da Silva, a researcher for INPA, the Amazon research institute, who has been studying Amazonia's dolphins for more than 30 years. "Not all the objectives of the moratorium were fulfilled, therefore the moratorium must be extended," she explained.</p><p>Research by da Silva, <a href="https://academic.oup.com/biolinnean/article-abstract/123/3/666/4888610" target="_blank">published in 2017</a>, found that a female dolphin's pregnancy typically lasts 13 months. After that, the mother feeds a calf underwater for two years. Due to that long gestation and nursing period, females only reproduce every three to five years.</p><p>"They are a very slow reproductive species," da Silva notes. "If the removal is higher [than the reproduction and rearing rate] the species does not have the capacity to replace itself."</p><p>Separate <a href="https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0191304" target="_blank">findings</a> by da Silva published in 2018 revealed that the Amazon river dolphin population in Brazil is halving every decade.</p>
<p>Prosecutors in Amazonas state, where the Mamirauá Institute is based, originally asked for the moratorium which started in 2015, warning that as many as 2,500 dolphins were being killed illegally each year for bait.</p><p>Da Silva reports that in November 2019 she met with officials from the Secretariat of Production of the State of Amazonas (SEPROR), to discuss the extension of the moratorium in Amazonas. But nothing has happened since, and the peak fishing season is due to begin in July.</p><p>"There is a huge amount of ignorance," she warns. "We need better information on fishing practices. There aren't strong enough laws to make fishermen report what they catch."</p><p>Marcelo Oliveira, a conservation specialist at World Wildlife Fund Brazil (WWF), agrees with that analysis. "Fishing is a threat but we don't have enough data," he says. "If we don't know where the river dolphins are, we can't say how bad [the threat] is. But it's expensive to do expeditions to monitor population trends."</p><p>WWF has been innovating — utilizing drones to accomplish the difficult job of making improved population estimates, flying 2.5 kilometer strips of river to record footage. "It's much cheaper and more efficient," than doing boat observations, he says. The NGO is currently partnering with British universities to analyze the drone findings using artificial intelligence.</p><p><span></span>But even with better data recording practices and an improved data set, Oliveira says that the river dolphins are still at great risk from a broad range of threats. "Bycatch sees so many dolphins caught in fishing nets, gold mining in the region has led to mercury poisoning in the water, and the construction of hydroelectric dams has reduced their habitat and genetic pool," he explains.</p>
<p>Oliveira believes that for now the focus of dolphin conservation should be on improved community engagement across the Amazon basin, with strong outreach to fishermen, in a region whose burgeoning population has now topped 34 million.</p><p>"Extending the moratorium could be a way to protect the dolphins, alternative baits could be a way, but we need to have a balance between development and biodiversity conservation," he says. "It's not a fight between the two. If communities are involved in conservation, the dolphins will be safer."</p><p>Fernando Trujillo, scientific director of the <a href="https://omacha.org/" target="_blank">Fundacion Omacha</a>, a Colombia-based environmental NGO specializing in protecting river dolphins set up in 1993, says that conservation must also be addressed on an international level.</p><p>"The end of [Brazil's] moratorium will send out the message that fishing is okay — even in other countries across Latin America," he says. "We need to work together with all the countries in terms of policy, agreeing on the same criteria and same legislation, especially when it comes to monitoring the borders."</p><p>Trujillo, who is also co-chair of the International Whaling Commission's small cetaceans committee, is calling for the Brazil moratorium to be extended another five years. "For so many reasons, it's a species we need to conserve and save," he says. "Alive dolphins can produce more money than dead ones for local communities through ecotourism."</p>
<p>Indigenous beliefs hold that the river dolphin — which transforms from grey to pink as it ages — is a magical creature. Males and females are both said to have the ability to morph at will into either a handsome man, or beautiful woman respectively, in order to seduce villagers in the dark of night. But scientists see the mammals as top predators of the Amazon aquatic ecosystem — considering them the jaguars of the rivers.</p><p>A spokesperson for the Ministry of Agriculture, Livestock and Supply said it had not yet extended the moratorium because "it is necessary to evaluate its effects on the recovery of populations of porpoises and caimans in order to verify the effectiveness of this fisheries management measure." When asked by Mongabay to comment, the ministry did not provide a timeframe for this evaluation period.</p><p>There is another myth about the Amazon river dolphin. It is said that to kill one is bad luck. Not knowing what negative aquatic impacts might radiate from the extinction of this top predator, authorities may want to heed this legend as they try to decide whether or not to renew Brazil's moratorium.</p>
<p><em>Reposted with permission from <a href="https://news.mongabay.com/2020/06/amazon-river-dolphin-risks-extinction-if-brazil-moratorium-not-renewed/" target="_blank">Mongabay</a>.</em></p>From Your Site Articles
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As Amazonian Wildfire Season Approaches, We Must Protect the Vulnerable Forest
15 June
Insights + Opinion
NASA satellite image showing fires raging across the Amazon rainforest on Aug. 11, 2019. NASA
By Daniel Ross
The wildfires that tore across Australia were as devastating as they were overwhelming, scorching some 15 million hectares of land, killing 34 people and more than 1 billion animals. In terms of its apocalyptic imagery — sweeping infernos torching great swaths with unerring speed — Australia's wildfires were hauntingly reminiscent of the fires that roared through the Amazon rainforest over the past year. Indeed, more than 80,000 fires hit the region during 2019, according to the Brazilian government.
<p>Though many months have now passed since global media focused on the unfolding disaster in the Amazon — one of the world's most <a href="https://phys.org/news/2019-11-forests-amazon-important-carbon.html" target="_blank">important carbon sinks</a> — the problem has far from disappeared. Indeed, as the region gears up toward its next Amazon wildfire season, the causes underpinning the problem — like illegal logging, encroachment from agribusinesses and profit-driven government policies — remain very much at play.</p><p>And though uncertainty surrounds some of the short- and long-term impacts of increased commercial activity in the Brazilian Amazon, the consequences on a rapidly warming planet are stark indeed. <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-51464694" target="_blank">New research</a> suggests that some <a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/tag/deforestation">deforested</a> regions of the rainforest are exhaling more carbon dioxide than they're taking in.</p>
<p>What's more, experts and environmentalists are quick to point the finger of blame toward a principal factor: a government presided over by Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro, whose tenure has been characterized by aggressive deregulation and increased commercial exploitation of the Amazon's resources.</p><p>"The impact is obvious: We have much more deforestation," said Philip Fearnside, an ecologist at the National Institute for Research in Amazonia in Brazil, earlier this year. Even before Bolsonaro took office officially, Fearnside <a href="https://e360.yale.edu/features/why-brazils-new-president-poses-an-unprecedented-threat-to-the-amazon" target="_blank">sounded the alarm</a> about the Brazilian president's intentions in the Amazon. And with Bolsonaro well into the second year of his tenure, "he's made good on those promises," Fearnside added.</p><p>Indeed, in the year ending on July 30, 2019, more than <a href="https://news.mongabay.com/2020/06/brazil-revises-deforestation-data-amazon-rainforest-loss-topped-10000-sq-km-in-2019/" target="_blank">10,000 square kilometers</a> of Brazilian Amazon rainforest were lost through deforestation — an amount last topped in 2008, according to Brazil's National Institute for Space Research. The number of active fires in August 2019 was three times higher than in 2018 and the highest number since 2010. The broad ramifications of these trends are far from clear-cut.</p>
<p>According to Jos Barlow, a professor of <a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/tag/conservation">conservation</a> science at Lancaster University, England, "<a href="https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/gcb.14872" target="_blank">different fire types have very different behaviors</a>," with varying severities of impact. While "understory" forest fires have the smallest flame heights and burn slowly across the forest floor, for example, "they also have long-lasting impacts, killing around 50 percent of all trees, with mortality occurring for many years after the fire," Barlow wrote in an email.</p><p>And so, "How long will it take for forests to recover biomass and primary forest species composition?" Barlow asked. "Will they fully recover, or will they be locked into a lower biomass state?"</p><p>Then there's the potential impact on the climate. For the first six months of 2019, deforestation and fires in the Brazilian Amazon released as much as <a href="https://whrc.org/new-data-brazilian-amazon-fires-have-released-104-141-million-metric-tons-of-co2/" target="_blank">141 million metric tons of carbon dioxide</a>, according to research led by the Woods Hole Research Center. As César Terrer, a postdoctoral scholar in Earth system science at Stanford's School of Earth, Energy and Environmental Sciences, explains it, the destruction of the Amazon through logging and wildfires means "we're also limiting the potential of current plants to continue storing CO2."</p>
<p>Terrer led a <a href="https://news.stanford.edu/press/view/29425" target="_blank">study</a> using anticipated carbon dioxide levels for the end of the century and found that plant biomass should increase by 12 percent as a result — an increase that would help enable plants and trees to store more carbon dioxide. "A 12 percent increase is huge," Terrer said in a phone interview. "For the Amazon in particular, that's more than 15 billion tons of carbon," he added, explaining that this amount is equivalent to "all the carbon stored in all the trees in all the forests" in the United States. "They could store all that additional carbon for free, if we let them be."</p><p>The problem? That 12 percent increase is predicated upon current plant biomass levels remaining as they currently are. Instead, "we're increasing deforestation rates in the Amazon, which is hugely important for the climate," Terrer said. "I'm strongly concerned."</p>
<p>After the turn of the century, Brazil appeared to be wrestling the problem of a shrinking Amazon. Between 2004 and 2012, Brazil employed an action plan instituting a number of key provisions, including an expanded network of protected areas alongside market incentives and disincentives, like a <a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/194008291300600308" target="_blank">successful deforestation moratorium</a> agreed to by nearly all soybean processors and exporters in Brazil. Deforestation rates during that time <a href="https://rainforests.mongabay.com/amazon/deforestation_calculations.html" target="_blank">plummeted</a>.</p><p>But 2012 marked a turning point. Since then, deforestation has been ticking upwards — 2016, for example, saw a <a href="https://e360.yale.edu/features/business-as-usual-a-resurgence-of-deforestation-in-the-brazilian-amazon" target="_blank">29 percent increase</a>.</p><p>The administration under Bolsonaro has used that fact to justify its policies in the Amazon, said Fearnside. "There were lots of things happening before Bolsonaro took office, but Bolsonaro has certainly increased that [deforestation] substantially," Fearnside said, pointing to the myriad ways his actions have played out.</p>
<p>The current Brazilian president has taken various measures to weaken the country's environment ministry — the Brazilian Institute of Environment and Renewable Natural Resources (IBAMA) — not least of all by tapping Ricardo Salles to lead it. Salles has called <a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/tag/climate-change">climate change</a> an "innocuous" and "<a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/dec/10/environmental-fines-are-ideological-says-brazil-minister-ricardo-salles" target="_blank">secondary</a>" issue, and has characterized the rate of illegal deforestation in the Amazon as near "<a href="https://www1.folha.uol.com.br/ambiente/2019/07/ricardo-salles-afirma-que-amazonia-ja-tem-desmatamento-relativo-zero.shtml" target="_blank">zero</a>." The director of Brazil's Space Research Institute was fired when the agency's own calculations — which illustrated a <a href="https://www1.folha.uol.com.br/internacional/en/scienceandhealth/2019/08/amazon-deforestation-in-july-increased-278-over-same-period-in-2018.shtml" target="_blank">278 percent increase in deforestation</a> last July — disproved Salles's claims.</p><p>The environment ministry has also stepped back its regulatory oversight. Though <a href="https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/environmental-conservation/article/brazils-new-president-and-ruralists-threaten-amazonias-environment-traditional-peoples-and-the-global-climate/F5C1E42BF9F6E6BDDB957B87601FC4F7/core-reader" target="_blank">95 percent of the deforestation</a> that occurred in the first three months of Bolsonaro's tenure was illegal, <a href="https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/environmental-conservation/article/brazils-new-president-and-ruralists-threaten-amazonias-environment-traditional-peoples-and-the-global-climate/F5C1E42BF9F6E6BDDB957B87601FC4F7" target="_blank">no offenders</a> were punished. Indeed, a <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/28/world/americas/brazil-deforestation-amazon-bolsonaro.html" target="_blank">New York Times analysis</a> found that IBAMA's enforcement actions fell by 20 percent during the first half of 2019, as compared with the year prior. <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/oct/02/war-for-survival-brazils-amazon-tribes-despair-as-land-raids-surge-under-bolsonaro" target="_blank">Increased land</a> raids have impacted Indigenous populations in particular.</p><p>"President Bolsonaro of Brazil is encouraging the farm owners near our lands to clear the forest," <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/sep/02/amazon-destruction-earth-brazilian-kayapo-people" target="_blank">wrote</a> Raoni Metuktire, chief of the Indigenous Brazilian Kayapo people. "And he is not doing anything to prevent them from invading our territory."</p>
<p>Some of Bolsonaro's actions have been met with opprobrium among certain sectors of Brazil's corporate class. Blairo Maggi, a billionaire soybean producer and former agriculture minister, has warned of international condemnation of the government's excursions into the Amazon. "The farmers, associations and industry will have to redo what has been lost," he told <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/12/05/world/americas/amazon-fires-bolsonaro-photos.html" target="_blank">The New York Times</a>. "We retreated 10 steps; we will have to work to get back to where we were."</p><p>Nevertheless, "there are large parts of the agribusiness that are on the other side," said Fearnside, pointing to the <a href="https://www.scielo.br/scielo.php?script=sci_arttext&pid=S1415-43662020000100008&lng=en&nrm=iso&tlng=en" target="_blank">thriving soybean industry</a> in Matopiba, a vast region spanning four Brazilian states. And where is this produce going? In 2017, <a href="https://www.globalcanopy.org/sites/default/files/documents/resources/Brief_DM_soy_final.pdf" target="_blank">92 percent</a> of the soybeans grown for the domestic market in Brazil were used to feed livestock to supply the world's demand for meat.</p><p>"The soy farmers there are all on the bandwagon of denying climate change, which is incredible given that climate change is likely to wipe out their soybean business there," Fearnside said.</p><p>With Bolsonaro only about one year and a half into his presidency, Fearnside is understandably concerned about his remaining tenure and describes the actions already undertaken as having opened up a Pandora's box. This includes the <a href="https://www.birmingham.ac.uk/news/latest/2020/01/wildfire-pollution-worsens-air-quality.aspx" target="_blank">human health impacts</a> from wildfire-created air pollution on both nearby and <a href="https://www.enn.com/articles/61766-brazilian-wildfire-pollution-worsens-air-quality-in-distant-cities" target="_blank">distant</a> urban centers — even intensifying <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-50573623" target="_blank">glacier melt in the Andes</a>.</p><p>Other experts agree with Fearnside. According to Jos Barlow earlier this year, all indications suggested that 2020 would be "even worse." That prophecy is proving true, with deforestation <a href="https://news.mongabay.com/2020/06/brazil-revises-deforestation-data-amazon-rainforest-loss-topped-10000-sq-km-in-2019/" target="_blank">rates currently on pace</a> to surpass last year's.</p>
<p><em>An earlier version of this article first appeared on </em><a href="https://truthout.org/articles/as-amazonian-wildfire-season-approaches-we-must-protect-the-vulnerable-forest/" target="_blank"><em>Truthout</em></a><em> and was produced in partnership with </em><a href="https://independentmediainstitute.org/earth-food-life/" target="_blank"><em>Earth | Food | Life</em></a><em>, a project of the Independent Media Institute.</em></p>From Your Site Articles
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A lone burnt tree stands on a deforested area in the surroundings of Porto Velho, Rondonia State, in the Amazon basin in west-central Brazil, on Aug. 24, 2019. CARL DE SOUZA / AFP / Getty Images
By Ajit Niranjan
Civil society groups and public prosecutors in Brazil are taking President Jair Bolsonaro's government to court for failing to protect the Amazon rainforest, adding pressure to an administration already under fire for mismanaging the coronavirus pandemic.
<p>Lawsuits filed last week challenge the government on two fronts: reducing inspections of exported timber — while demoting the environment agency expert whose team advised against it — and freezing climate funds to preserve forests that other countries also rely on to offset their carbon emissions.</p><p><br/></p>
<p>They are among a series of legal challenges that have been launched in Brazil after a tumultuous year-and-a-half of Bolsonaro rule. His administration has overseen a rise in deforestation, attacked the rights of people indigenous to the Amazon and relaxed rules to prevent illegal <a href="https://www.dw.com/en/amazon-deforestation-eu-firms-linked-to-illegal-logging-in-brazil/a-48442226" target="_blank">logging</a>, <a href="https://www.dw.com/en/mass-deforestation-how-trade-fells-trees-in-brazil-and-indonesia/a-48280649" target="_blank">ranching</a> and <a href="https://www.dw.com/en/brazils-amazon-rainforest-has-become-the-wild-west-for-illegal-gold-miners/a-52623368" target="_blank">mining</a>.</p><p>Bolsonaro is a climate change denier who considers the environment to be a kind of enemy, said Marcio Astrini, executive secretary of Brazil-based think tank Climate Observatory, which provided the legal analysis behind the lawsuits. "It's very hard to believe Bolsonaro will change his behavior or mindset. What we really need to do is neutralize the attacks on the environment."</p>
<p>In recent weeks, the Brazilian government has been rebuked by foreign governments, investors and businesses for enabling deforestation — and by courts and protestors at home for <a href="https://www.dw.com/en/where-could-brazils-criminal-investigation-of-jair-bolsonaro-lead/a-53284984" target="_blank">political interference</a> and its handling of the coronavirus pandemic.</p><p>Brazil's supreme court ordered the government on Monday to resume publishing <a href="https://www.dw.com/en/supreme-court-rules-brazil-must-share-virus-data/a-53754069" target="_blank">coronavirus statistics</a> after it purged the health ministry website of COVID-19 case numbers and death tolls. The virus has killed more than 37,000 people in Brazil, which has the second-most coronavirus cases in the world behind only the U.S. "The manipulation of statistics is a maneuver of totalitarian regimes," said supreme court judge Gilmar Mendes. "The trick will not exempt responsibility for the eventual genocide."</p><p>Deforestation, meanwhile, had already last year hit its highest level since 2008. On Tuesday the country's space research agency INPE revised its estimates, saying it they were higher than previously thought. Using satellite data, the scientists calculated that year-on-year <a href="https://www.dw.com/en/brazil-reports-even-more-deforestation-after-revising-data/a-53767938" target="_blank">deforestation of the Brazilian Amazon</a> rose by 34 percent between August 2018 and July 2019, felling an area of forest about as big as Jamaica.</p><p>Georg Witschel, Germany's ambassador to Brazil, told <a href="https://g1.globo.com/politica/noticia/2020/06/11/desmatamento-na-amazonia-faz-cada-vez-mais-dificil-acordo-ue-mercosul-diz-embaixador-alemao.ghtml" target="_blank">Brazilian news outlet G1</a> on Thursday that deforestation makes it "increasingly difficult" to ratify the free trade agreement between the EU and South American trade bloc Mercosur.</p>
Coronavirus and Deforestation
<p>Brazil's environmental and health crises are closely linked. The coronavirus pandemic had given fresh impetus to land grabbers razing swathes of forests as lockdowns have kept law enforcement officers at home.</p><p>Now, the fires that typically follow the felling of trees could further strain health systems.</p><p>Blazing wildfires, like the ones that devastated the Amazon last year, spout pollutants that lower air quality and work their way into people's lungs, exacerbating the same <a href="https://www.dw.com/en/coronavirus-air-pollution-might-raise-risk-of-fatality/a-52977422" target="_blank">breathing diseases</a> that leave people more vulnerable to the coronavirus. A joint peak in forest fires and COVID-19 cases could overwhelm hospitals without "incisive intervention by the State to curb illegal acts," according to a report published in May by INPE.</p><p>That could collapse health systems in several Amazonian states that are already operating at the limit, the authors wrote. "If the turning point of the epidemiological curve of COVID-19 does not occur immediately, in May 2020, there will certainly be an overlap of fires with the pandemic."</p><p>This could spell disaster for indigenous peoples and uncontacted tribes, said Sarah Shenker, a campaigner with Survival International. "In Brazil, there are more than 100 uncontacted tribes and they could be wiped out if invaders are not removed from their territory."</p><p>Even before the current coronavirus crisis, scientists warned that <a href="https://www.dw.com/en/how-deforestation-can-lead-to-more-infectious-diseases/a-53282244" target="_blank">forest loss makes pandemics more likely</a> by increasing the chance that diseases jump from animals to humans. A study published in the journal PNAS in October found that deforestation of the Amazon significantly increases transmission of malaria, a different type of disease.</p>Preserving the Climate
<p>The Amazon rainforest — 60 percent of which lies in Brazil — is one of the world's great carbon sinks. Preserving its trees and plants is crucial to meeting international targets that <a href="https://www.dw.com/en/co2-emissions-gap-un-report-warns-of-collective-failure-to-act/a-51407286" target="_blank">limit global warming</a> to well below 2 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels.</p><p>Lawsuits that take years to complete are not going to produce results fast enough, said Ricardo Galvao, a former director of INPE who was <a href="https://www.dw.com/en/brazils-research-chief-sacked-after-deforestation-row-with-bolsonaro/a-49874119" target="_blank">fired by Bolsonaro</a> in August.</p><p>To curb deforestation in the Amazon, said Galvao, the best tools are "positive actions that show [that] exploring the forest, rather than destroying it, gives economic returns." For instance, international organizations like the UN could certify products from sustainably managed forests and countries could lower import taxes on such "green-stamped" goods.</p><p>Brazil has a legal commitment to reduce deforestation in the Amazon to a rate equivalent to about 3,900 square kilometers per year from 2020 onwards. In 2012, measures to protect the Amazon had brought deforestation down to 4,600 square kilometers, close to the target, but by 2019, it had rebounded to 9,800 square kilometers. </p><p>The Brazilian government, which in May brought in the military to <a href="https://www.dw.com/en/brazil-deploys-military-to-protect-amazon-rainforest/a-53398270" target="_blank">protect the forest</a>, has disputed its image as an environmental pariah. "We are the country that most preserves the environment in the world," said Bolsonaro on World Environment Day last week. "Unjustly, [we are] the most attacked."</p><p>Data from Brazil's Institute of Socioeconomic Studies show government spending on forest inspection dropped from R$17.4 million (US$3.5 million, €3.1 million) to R$5.3 million from the first five months of 2019 to the same period in 2020, while funding for activities under Brazil's national climate change plan were cut from R$436 million last year to R$247 million this year.</p><p>Ibama, the Brazilian environment agency, did not respond to a request for comment.</p><p>Big tracts of the rainforest have no recorded owner, making it easier to illegally grab land, and a lack of law enforcement can even mean that farmers who comply with regulations struggle to compete with those who don't.</p><p>Working with sustainable farmers and fixing land ownership structures could help Brazil slow deforestation during the coronavirus pandemic and recession, said Monica De Los Rios, Brazil coordinator at the nonprofit Earth Innovation Institute. "This is the most critical moment in the history of the Amazon."</p>
<p class=""><em>Reposted with permission from <a href="https://www.dw.com/en/to-stop-amazon-deforestation-brazilian-groups-take-bolsonaro-to-court/a-53785160" target="_blank">Deutsche Welle</a>.<a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/r/entryeditor/2646172097#/" target="_self"></a></em><em></em></p>From Your Site Articles
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In 'Totalitarian' Move, Brazil's Bolsonaro Removes Death and Case Totals From Coronavirus Website
08 June
Politics
Brazil President Jair Bolsonaro speaks with supporters at Alvorada Palace on June 05, 2020 in Brasilia, Brazil. Brazil has over 614,000 confirmed positive cases of Coronavirus and OVER 34,000 deaths. Andressa Anholete / Getty Images
President Donald Trump isn't the only world leader who has been criticized for sidelining science in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic.
<p><a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/tag/brazil" target="_self">Brazil's</a> Health Ministry removed the total number of coronavirus cases and deaths from a government <a href="https://covid.saude.gov.br/" target="_blank">website</a> Saturday, <a href="https://uk.mobile.reuters.com/article/amp/idUKKBN23D0Q4" target="_blank">Reuters reported</a>. And health ministry employees told local media that the scrubbing was ordered by far-right President <a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/tag/jair-bolsonaro" target="_self">Jair Bolsonaro</a>, according to <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/jun/07/brazil-stops-releasing-covid-19-death-toll-and-wipes-data-from-official-site" target="_blank">The Guardian</a>.</p><p>"The manipulation of statistics is a manoeuvre of totalitarian regimes," Supreme Court Judge Gilmar Mendes tweeted in response. "The trick will not exempt responsibility for the eventual genocide."</p>
<div id="9ad4a" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="cf371bf78165edee6d4a710071db85b9"><blockquote class="twitter-tweet twitter-custom-tweet" data-twitter-tweet-id="1269399102242119686" data-partner="rebelmouse"><div style="margin:1em 0">A manipulação de estatísticas é manobra de regimes totalitários. Tenta-se ocultar os números da #COVID19 para reduz… https://t.co/ykIvshjy6m</div> — Gilmar Mendes (@Gilmar Mendes)<a href="https://twitter.com/gilmarmendes/statuses/1269399102242119686">1591483304.0</a></blockquote></div>
<p>The government coronavirus tracking website was taken down Friday and reloaded Saturday with only data on cases, deaths and recoveries in the past 24 hours, according to Reuters.</p><p>"The cumulative data ... does not reflect the moment the country is in," Bolsonaro tweeted, as Reuters translated. "Other actions are underway to improve the reporting of cases and confirmation of diagnoses."</p>
<div id="1c66b" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="587ff3ba139eb9b2467a3df02021dfbc"><blockquote class="twitter-tweet twitter-custom-tweet" data-twitter-tweet-id="1269241529387888640" data-partner="rebelmouse"><div style="margin:1em 0">3- Ao acumular dados, além de não indicar que a maior parcela já não está com a doença, não retratam o momento do p… https://t.co/zBWryV5IDl</div> — Jair M. Bolsonaro (@Jair M. Bolsonaro)<a href="https://twitter.com/jairbolsonaro/statuses/1269241529387888640">1591445736.0</a></blockquote></div>
<p>However, the website change comes as Brazil battles one of the worst coronavirus outbreaks in the world, <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/amp/world-latin-america-52952686" target="_blank">BBC News reported</a>. It has more than 640,000 confirmed cases, behind only the U.S., and more than 35,000 deaths, the third largest death toll after the U.S. and the UK. The move also came after the country reported more than 1,000 deaths for four days in a row.</p><p>The website change was widely condemned by journalists, members of Congress and <a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/tag/public-health" target="_self">public health</a> officials.</p><p>"The authoritarian, insensitive, inhuman and unethical attempt to make those killed by Covid-19 invisible will not succeed. We and Brazilian society will not forget them, nor the tragedy that befalls the nation," the president of Brazil's national council of state health secretaries Alberto Beltrame said in a statement reported by The Guardian.</p>
<p>Bolsonaro has consistently downplayed the pandemic, calling it a "little flu" and arguing against lockdown measures, according to BBC News. On Friday, he threatened to exit the World Health Organization.</p><p>Before the website change, the government was also criticized for pushing back the publication of its daily virus update from 5 p.m. to 10 p.m., according to Reuters.</p><p>In response, head of the Brazilian Press Association Paulo Jeronimo de Sousa accused the government of "trying to silence the press at this late hour."</p><p>"Transparency of information is a powerful instrument for combating the epidemic," he wrote, according to Reuters.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/trump-dismantles-environmental-protections-under-cover-of-coronavirus-2645989316.html" target="_self">Also like the Trump administration</a>, the Bolsonaro government has used to coronavirus crisis to accelerate its deregulatory environmental agenda.</p><p>Environment Minister Ricardo Salles said in April the pandemic was a good time to loosen protections.</p><p>"We need to make an effort here during this period of calm in terms of press coverage because people are only talking about Covid," he said, as <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/06/world/americas/amazon-deforestation-brazil.html?campaign_id=51&emc=edit_MBE_p_20200608&instance_id=19175&nl=morning-briefing&regi_id=88631294&section=longRead&segment_id=30326&te=1&user_id=d8eb7cee9d3c5ab39515239b6ec54d19" target="_blank">The New York Times reported</a>.</p>
<p>Lax law enforcement because of the outbreak has led to increased <a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/tag/deforestation" target="_self">deforestation</a> in the <a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/tag/amazon-rainforest" target="_self">Amazon rainforest</a> in recent months, The New York Times reported Monday. This is likely to lead to even worse <a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/tag/wildfires" target="_self">wildfires</a> than the ones that <a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/amazon-rainforest-wildfires-2639934452.html" target="_self">devastated</a> the forest last summer.</p><p>"The trend line is shooting upward compared to a year that was already historic in terms of a rise in deforestation," Brazilian federal prosecutor Ana Carolina Haliuc Bragança told The New York Times. "If state entities don't adopt very decisive measures, we're looking at a likely tragedy."</p>
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Aerial picture showing a deforested piece of land in the Amazon rainforest in northern Brazil on August 23, 2019. Carl de Souza / AFP / Getty Images
by Rhett A. Butler
Despite the global economic slowdown due to the COVID-19 pandemic, deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon appears to be continuing largely unabated with forest clearing over the past 12 months reaching the highest level since monthly data started being released publicly in 2007, according to official data released Friday by the country's national space research institute INPE. Forest loss in Earth's largest rainforest has now risen 13 consecutive months relative to year-earlier figures.
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<p>INPE's deforestation monitoring system, DETER, detected 406 square kilometers of forest loss in the "legal Amazon" during the month of April. That brings the extent of deforestation measured by the system to 9,320 square kilometers for the year ended April 30, 2020, 40% higher than where it stood a year ago and more than twice as high as it was in April 2018.</p><p>5,606 square kilometers of forest have been lost since the "deforestation year" began August 1, 2019, the highest on record for this time of year.</p>
<img lazy-loadable="true" src="https://assets.rebelmouse.io/eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9.eyJpbWFnZSI6Imh0dHBzOi8vYXNzZXRzLnJibC5tcy8yMzI3NTY4Ni9vcmlnaW4uanBnIiwiZXhwaXJlc19hdCI6MTYwNzg0NzM2N30.vg4xwAE29rAxqwMPxi780ulRhQODrJrVVm-k2o-nQcE/img.jpg?width=980" id="904be" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="d3abf923ab48f5882a02e486610d988d" data-rm-shortcode-name="rebelmouse-image" />
<p>Deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon, which accounts for nearly two-thirds of <a href="https://rainforests.mongabay.com/amazon/" target="_blank">the Amazon rainforest</a>, has been trending upward since bottoming at 4,571 square kilometers in 2012. Prior to that, deforestation had been declining in the region thanks to better forest monitoring and environmental law enforcement, public and private sector efforts to curb forest clearing, the creation of new protected areas and indigenous territories.</p><p>According to <a href="https://news.mongabay.com/2014/06/in-cutting-deforestation-brazil-leads-world-in-reducing-emissions/" target="_blank">a 2014 study published in the journal Science</a>, the drop in deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon between 2004 and 2013 avoided the greenhouse gas emissions equivalent of taking all cars off American roads for three years — 3.2 billion tons.</p>
<img lazy-loadable="true" src="https://assets.rebelmouse.io/eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9.eyJpbWFnZSI6Imh0dHBzOi8vYXNzZXRzLnJibC5tcy8yMzI3MDQwNy9vcmlnaW4uanBnIiwiZXhwaXJlc19hdCI6MTYzNzY4MjkxNX0.TCQ8p3P7K85e5KbuvxRZjeNOGF2hPAzD8I0l9dM27nw/img.jpg?width=980" id="b1acd" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="c1bd9831a9bb7abcc0aa7ed2b66c9e72" data-rm-shortcode-name="rebelmouse-image" />
Official Brazilian government data showing annual deforestation (Aug 1-Jul 31 year) in the Brazilian Amazon since 1988.
<p>The rise in deforestation has been particularly sharp since Jair Bolsonaro assumed the presidency in January 2019. Bolsonaro has <a href="https://news.mongabay.com/2019/12/bolsonaros-brazil-2019-brings-death-by-1000-cuts-to-amazon-part-one/" target="_blank">rolled back environmental regulations</a>, granted amnesty from fines for illegal deforestation, <a href="https://news.mongabay.com/2019/06/brazil-guts-environmental-agencies-clears-way-for-unchecked-deforestation/" target="_blank">cut budgets for environmental law enforcement</a>, <a href="https://news.mongabay.com/2019/08/future-of-amazon-deforestation-data-in-doubt-as-research-head-sacked/" target="_blank">diminished the role of scientists in the government</a>, blamed environmental NGOs for deforestation and <a href="https://news.mongabay.com/2019/11/brazilian-president-claims-leonardo-dicaprio-funded-amazon-fires/" target="_blank">claimed without evidence that Leonardo DiCaprio funded last year's fires in the Amazon</a>, and opened <a href="https://news.mongabay.com/2019/03/brazils-new-forest-code-puts-vast-areas-of-protected-amazon-forest-at-risk/" target="_blank">protected areas</a> and <a href="https://news.mongabay.com/2020/05/brazil-opens-38000-square-miles-of-indigenous-lands-to-outsiders/" target="_blank">prospective indigenous territories</a> for extractive industries and agribusiness. He's openly called for more deforestation in the Amazon, while his administration has <a href="https://news.mongabay.com/2020/05/brazil-sacks-officials-who-curbed-deforestation-on-amazon-indigenous-lands/" target="_blank">sacked officials charged with protecting forests and indigenous peoples</a> against illegal land invasions.</p>
<img lazy-loadable="true" src="https://assets.rebelmouse.io/eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9.eyJpbWFnZSI6Imh0dHBzOi8vYXNzZXRzLnJibC5tcy8yMzI3MDQxMC9vcmlnaW4uanBnIiwiZXhwaXJlc19hdCI6MTYwMTM3MzE2MX0.Il_7ONWRaMLRwmrzl1f0H0yJLb8uvrPnur_hKOdWuso/img.jpg?width=980" id="6a7ab" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="95bcd8ecea2bfa8924a086e584d348e9" data-rm-shortcode-name="rebelmouse-image" />
Amazon rainforest canopy in Brazil. Rhett A. Butler / Mongabay
<p>The combination of rising forest clearance and <a href="https://news.mongabay.com/2020/04/satellite-data-show-amazon-rainforest-likely-drier-more-fire-prone-this-year/" target="_blank">abnormally dry conditions across vast swathes of Brazil</a> is setting up the region for an active fire season. Last year, fires in the Amazon made international headlines when the resulting smoke billowed over Sao Paulo, <a href="https://news.mongabay.com/2019/08/amazon-rainforest-fires-leave-sao-paulo-in-the-dark/" target="_blank">blocking out the sun mid-day</a>. Widespread condemnation from NGOs, human rights groups, business leaders, celebrities, and European political leaders as well as global calls for boycotts of Brazilian companies and products prompted Bolsonaro to mobilize the army to help with fire-fighting efforts. Yet Bolsonaro pressed forward with policies and actions that will increase deforestation and fires nonetheless, <a href="https://news.mongabay.com/2019/11/experts-blame-bolsonaro-for-surge-in-deforestation-warn-of-worse-to-come/" target="_blank">say experts</a>.</p><p>Accelerating deforestation, forest degradation, and drought in the Amazon is of great concern to <a href="https://news.mongabay.com/2019/12/the-tipping-point-is-here-it-is-now-top-amazon-scientists-warn/" target="_blank">scientists who warn that the entire biome may be near a tipping point</a> where large areas of wet <a href="https://rainforests.mongabay.com/" target="_blank">rainforest</a> could transition to dry tropical woodlands and savanna. <a href="https://news.mongabay.com/2020/01/impending-amazon-tipping-point-puts-biome-and-world-at-risk-scientists-warn/" target="_blank">Such a transition</a> could have dramatic implications for regional rainfall, with the Inter Tropical Convergence Zone potentially shifting northward, leading to drier conditions across <a href="https://news.mongabay.com/2019/08/a-healthy-and-productive-amazon-is-the-foundation-of-brazils-sovereignty/" target="_blank">South America's breadbasket and major urban areas</a>. <a href="https://news.mongabay.com/2019/09/pro-deforestation-policies-could-be-ruinous-for-farmers-commentary/" target="_blank">The impact on regional economies</a> <a href="https://news.mongabay.com/2020/02/amazon-tipping-point-puts-brazils-agribusiness-energy-sector-at-risk-top-scientists/" target="_blank">could be substantial</a>, while the impact on ecosystem function and biodiversity of the Amazon could be devastating, <a href="https://news.mongabay.com/2018/03/amazon-forest-to-savannah-tipping-point-could-be-far-closer-than-thought-commentary/" target="_blank">according to researchers</a>.</p>
<p><em>Reposted with permission from <a href="https://news.mongabay.com/2020/05/amazon-deforestation-increases-for-13th-straight-month-in-brazil/" target="_blank">Mongabay</a>.</em></p>From Your Site Articles
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Trending
Deforestation and river pollution in the Amazon rainforest near Menkragnoti Indigenous Land, Pará, Brazil. Marcio Isensee e Sa / iStock / Getty Images Plus
Activists warn that the far-right government in Brazil is using the coronavirus pandemic as a smokescreen to undermine protections for the Amazon rainforest.
<p>With the world sheltered in place, the government assembled a "historic assault" on the Amazon and the <a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/tag/indigenous-peoples">indigenous</a> tribes who live there, entities it is meant to protect, reported <a href="https://abcnews.go.com/International/deforestation-amazon-rainforest-accelerates-amid-covid-19-pandemic/story?id=70526188" target="_blank">ABC news</a>. The controversial legislation regarding indigenous lands potentially compounds tribes' vulnerability to invasion and infection, the news report said.</p><p>Brazilian President <a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/tag/jair-bolsonaro" target="_self">Jair Bolsonaro</a> and his supporters are sacking key environmental officials and quickly and discreetly dismantling rules shielding protected reserves of rainforest, reported <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/may/06/brazil-using-coronavirus-to-cover-up-assaults-on-amazon-warn-activists" target="_blank">The Guardian</a>. The moves are the latest in the regime's development-friendly <a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/jair-bolsonaro-boosting-deforestation-2639445982.html" target="_self">policy changes that have accelerated deforestation</a> in the world's largest rainforest.</p>
<p>Preliminary satellite data shows that deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon rose more than 50 percent in the first three months of 2020, compared to the same three-month period last year, reported <a href="https://abcnews.go.com/International/deforestation-amazon-rainforest-accelerates-amid-covid-19-pandemic/story?id=70526188" target="_blank">ABC news</a>.</p><p>"Our territory keeps being invaded by loggers and hunters," Laercio Guajajara, a member of the Guajajara tribe, told ABC News. Despite the global health crisis, there were "still a lot of invasions," he said.</p><p>Bolsonaro is "notorious" for racist remarks against indigenous people, distrust of environmentalists and nationalist justifications for developing the Amazon, reported <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/may/06/brazil-using-coronavirus-to-cover-up-assaults-on-amazon-warn-activists" target="_blank">The Guardian</a>.</p><p>Bolsonaro told foreign journalists, "<a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/jair-bolsonaro-boosting-deforestation-2639445982.html?rebelltitem=1#rebelltitem1">The Amazon is ours, not yours</a>," reported <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/28/world/americas/brazil-deforestation-amazon-bolsonaro.html" target="_blank">The New York Times</a>.</p>
<p>This approach makes him popular with farmers, wildcat miners, loggers and land-grabbers and dangerous for environmentalists and indigenous tribes, <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/may/06/brazil-using-coronavirus-to-cover-up-assaults-on-amazon-warn-activists" target="_blank">The Guardian</a> noted.</p><p>"The government has a project and it is advancing over the forest, over indigenous peoples, to benefit those who want the forest cut down," said Mariana Mota, a public policy specialist at Greenpeace Brazil, the news report said.</p><p>The mass deforestation that has increased under Bolsonaro has likely pushed the Amazon beyond the <a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/amazon-rainforest-point-of-no-return-2645509920.html" target="_self">point of no return</a>, scientists said. The entire ecosystem could <a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/amazon-ecosystem-collapse-2645458118.html" target="_self">collapse within 50 years</a>, and that critical tipping point could be reached as early as next year, researchers said. If and when that happens, the rainforest would <a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/amazon-deforestation-carbon-emissions-2645127492.html" target="_self">become a carbon source rather than a global sink</a>, exacerbating the effects of <a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/tag/climate-crisis">climate change</a>.</p><p>The situation has only worsened since the coronavirus outbreak, with the covert passage of new rules that further undermine the Amazon and the tribes that live there.</p>
<p>At the disease's outbreak, <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/mar/27/brazil-scales-back-environmental-enforcement-coronavirus-outbreak-deforestation" target="_blank">The Guardian</a> reported that Brazil's environmental agency scaled back enforcement measures, leaving indigenous tribes and the lands they protect more vulnerable to loggers' attacks. In April, Bolsonaro's indigenous affairs agency, FUNAI, passed a new rule that prevents certain long-held indigenous lands awaiting official designation from being labeled and protected as "indigenous" under the law while they wait, <a href="https://abcnews.go.com/International/deforestation-amazon-rainforest-accelerates-amid-covid-19-pandemic/story?id=70526188" target="_blank">ABC News</a> said.</p><p>The seemingly-obscure rule <a href="http://www.in.gov.br/web/dou/-/instrucao-normativa-n-9-de-16-de-abril-de-2020-253343033" target="_blank">IN 09</a> could open up nearly one third of indigenous lands currently awaiting designation to illegal occupation and deforestation, the news report said.</p>
<p>Bolsonaro first announced another controversial presidential decree, <a href="http://www.planalto.gov.br/ccivil_03/_Ato2019-2022/2019/Mpv/mpv910.htm" target="_blank">Provisional Measure (MP) 910</a>, in December 2019. The rule is now being fast-tracked towards becoming permanent law, ABC News said. MP 910 allows people who illegally logged or squatted on protected federal lands before December 2018 to purchase such lands at reduced prices.</p><p>This effectively legalizes "land-grabbing" in protected forests and indigenous reserves, <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/may/06/brazil-using-coronavirus-to-cover-up-assaults-on-amazon-warn-activists" target="_blank">The Guardian</a> noted. Farmers illegally squatting could each purchase up to 2,500 hectares of rainforest for cheap. According to the news report, land grabbing, a common practice in the Amazon, involves deforesting, burning the dead trees and putting cattle on the cleared lands to consolidate possession.</p><p>Imazon, a non-profit environmentalist group, found that the measure could lead to deforestation of an additional 16,000 square kilometers of rainforest by 2027, <a href="https://abcnews.go.com/International/deforestation-amazon-rainforest-accelerates-amid-covid-19-pandemic/story?id=70526188" target="_blank">ABC News</a> added.</p>
<p>In a rare move, 49 federal prosecutors across Brazil <a href="http://www.mpf.mp.br/mt/sala-de-imprensa/Documentos%20para%20link/RECMT.pdf" target="_blank">called</a> for the rule to be annulled for its "unconstitutionality, unconventionality and illegality," <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/may/06/brazil-using-coronavirus-to-cover-up-assaults-on-amazon-warn-activists" target="_blank">The Guardian</a> said, agreeing it would lead to a land-grab.</p><p>The decree has until May 19 to be approved by Congress, but lawmakers from the agricultural lobby are pushing for an immediate virtual vote in the midst of the pandemic and without standard scrutiny, reported both ABC News and The Guardian.</p><p>Farmers supporting the rule argue it will regularize the Amazon's chaotic land ownership and allow them to hold title to land where they've squatted. This, they argue, will provide access to credit, improve productivity and therefore reduce the need to further expand into the forest, reported The Guardian.</p><p>Reducing protections encourages land invasions, which bring violence and disease. Indigenous leaders and activists fear that history will repeat itself.</p><p>"Five centuries ago, these ethnic groups were decimated by diseases brought by European colonisers … Now, with this new scourge spreading rapidly across Brazil … [they] may disappear completely since they have no means of combating Covid-19," an <a href="https://secure.avaaz.org/po/community_petitions/presidente_do_brasil_e_aos_lideres_do_legislativo__ajude_a_proteger_os_povos_indigenas_da_amazonia_do_covid19/?cZZUvqb&utm_source=sharetools&utm_medium=copy&utm_campaign=petition-994813-ajude_a_proteger_os_povos_indigenas_da_amazonia_do_covid19&utm_term=ZZUvqb%2Bpo" target="_blank">open letter to Bolsonaro</a> warned, reported <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/may/03/eve-of-genocide-brazil-urged-save-amazon-tribes-covid-19-sebastiao-salgado" target="_blank">The Guardian</a>.</p>
<p>"We are on the eve of a genocide," said Brazilian photojournalist Sebastião Salgado, who organized the petition and who has spent nearly four decades documenting the Amazon and its inhabitants, The Guardian reported.<br></p><p>Alessandra Munduruku, an indigenous leader from Pará state, told <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/may/06/brazil-using-coronavirus-to-cover-up-assaults-on-amazon-warn-activists" target="_blank">The Guardian</a>, "The indigenous peoples are alone and we have to fight against the virus, the loggers and the wildcat miners. We don't know which is worse."</p><p>Since the rollbacks, indigenous tribes have also reported increased logging and violent attacks. Seven indigenous leaders, many who were outspoken against illegal logging, have been murdered in the past six months, reported <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/may/06/brazil-using-coronavirus-to-cover-up-assaults-on-amazon-warn-activists" target="_blank">The Guardian</a>.</p><p>"The invaders think they can enter the indigenous reserve because of the government agenda," said Ivaneide Bandeira, of the non-profit group Kanindé, reported The Guardian. "Covid is the cover and the excuse."</p>
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$3 Million and an Official Apology: Brazil’s Ashaninka Get Unprecedented Compensation for Deforestation on Their Land
18 April
Popular
Arison Jardim / The Ashaninka of the Amônia River Association
By Naira Hofmeister, Translated by Matt Rinaldi
- An unprecedented court settlement guaranteed reparations to the Ashaninka people of the state of Acre, in the Brazilian Amazon, whose lands were deforested in the 1980s to supply the European furniture industry. The logging company penalized was owned by the family of the current governor of Acre, Gladson Cameli.
- The conflict was resolved through mediation from the Prosecutor General of the Republic, Augusto Aras, after the case had circulated in the courts with no resolution for 20 years.
- The indigenous people only agreed with the negotiation because it included an official apology and a recognition of their "enormous importance as guardians" of the Amazon.
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<p class=""><em>Reposted with permission from <a href="https://news.mongabay.com/2020/04/3-million-and-an-official-apology-brazils-ashaninka-get-unprecedented-compensation-for-deforestation-on-their-land/" target="_blank">Mongabay</a>. </em><em></em></p><div></div>
<p>Far from the Brazil nut trees that shape the landscape of the <a href="https://terrasindigenas.org.br/pt-br/terras-indigenas/3716" target="_blank">Kampa do Rio Amônia</a> Indigenous Reserve in the western tip of the state of Acre, the <a href="https://pib.socioambiental.org/pt/Povo:Ashaninka" target="_blank">Ashaninka</a> people realized their most important victory since the federal government first recognized their territory in 1992. On April 1, 2020, the Prosecutor General of the Republic, Augusto Aras, signed an unprecedented settlement that guaranteed reparations for crimes committed almost 40 years ago. The <a href="http://www.mpf.mp.br/pgr/documentos/documentoassinado.pdf" target="_blank">agreement</a> gives this indigenous community the right to compensation of R$ 14 million (nearly US$ 3 million) with an official apology from the criminal offenders.</p><p><span></span>Their crime: cutting down of thousands of mahogany, cedar and other tree species to supply the European furniture industry from 1981 to 1987. The devastation struck a quarter of the area that currently comprises the indigenous reserve. Francisco Piyãko, the Ashaninka leader, was an adolescent at the time of the logging invasion. "What matters to us is what this agreement represents for the Ashaninka cause and how it can have repercussions in affirming the rights and values of the indigenous peoples in a broader sense," explained Piyãko to Mongabay.</p><img lazy-loadable="true" src="https://assets.rebelmouse.io/eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9.eyJpbWFnZSI6Imh0dHBzOi8vYXNzZXRzLnJibC5tcy8yMzE0NDA1MS9vcmlnaW4uanBnIiwiZXhwaXJlc19hdCI6MTYwMjEzMDQ2Mn0.3FgS_tcOPfnZeV70vUcF34iy6jQIrgBrOgu4snWhLPE/img.jpg?width=980" id="d3a3e" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="73b5348078c1a5f78d0092370479e5b0" data-rm-shortcode-name="rebelmouse-image" />
Celebration of the Ashaninka people in the Kampa of the Amônia River Indigenous Reserve, by the Peruvian border. Arison Jardim / The Ashaninka of the Amônia River Association
A Two-Decade Dispute
<p>The settlement marks the end of a legal dispute that started in 1996, when the Federal Public Ministry (MPF) brought a Public Civil Action against lumber companies owned by the powerful Cameli family. The same family as the current governor of Acre, Gladson Cameli, and his uncle, Orleir Cameli, who was also governor from 1994 to 1998.</p><p>The Ashaninka prevailed in their initial court case, in appeals courts and also in the Superior Court of Justice (the highest <a href="https://www.wikiwand.com/en/Appellate_court" target="_blank">appellate court</a> in Brazil for non-constitutional questions). But as soon the case reached the federal Supreme Court in 2011, it stalled.</p><p>At an impasse, an extrajudicial settlement was imposed, but it took a year of regular negotiations until both sides accepted the terms of the agreement. "It was a great challenge for everyone, because the negotiation involved large sums and constitutional questions. It required a lot of study, partners and various public authorities to analyze each detail," observes Antônio Rodrigo, attorney for the Ashaninka.</p><p>"This is the first time in the history of Brazilian law that something like this happened. I'm so proud. It was hard, but wonderful," he summarizes.</p><p>According to a <a href="http://www.mpf.mp.br/pgr/noticias-pgr/acordo-historico-garante-reparacao-a-povo-indigena-ashaninka-por-desmatamento-irregular-em-suas-terras" target="_blank">notification posted on the Federal Public Ministry's website</a>, which qualified the result of the negotiation as "historic," Augusto Aras celebrated the enforcement of the constitution, "appreciating that the indigenous people have the guaranteed right to a decent life, to choose their own destiny and take part in political decisions."</p><p>"With this agreement, there is a feeling that we are building a new moment of peace, harmony and, above all, understanding that wounds exist to be healed, not perpetuated," Aras concludes.</p><p>One of the defendants in the case, Abrahão Cândido da Silva, was excluded from the settlement and still faces charges for the deforestation and invasion of the indigenous land. The case is on the <a href="http://www.stf.jus.br/portal/pauta/verTema.asp?id=134777" target="_blank">federal Supreme Court docket for April</a>. In this case, the Supreme Court ministers will decide not only whether to convict the remaining defendant, but also if there is a statute of limitations for claiming compensation for an environmental crime.</p><p>The federal Public Ministry maintains that this environmental damage is indefeasible, meaning it cannot be overturned, as it falls under the "right to life," and that determining a statute of limitations would deny future generations the right to fight for a healthy environment. That thesis was accepted by the Superior Court of Justice, and the Supreme Court review of their decision will take on a status of general repercussion — or, in other words, the ruling will apply to all cases from this point on.</p><p>"This definition will affect hundreds of thousands of cases. To give three recent examples of massive environmental crimes that took place in Brazil: we have Mariana, Brumadinho and, last year, the oil spill in Brazilian waters," asserts the attorney Rodrigo.</p><img lazy-loadable="true" src="https://assets.rebelmouse.io/eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9.eyJpbWFnZSI6Imh0dHBzOi8vYXNzZXRzLnJibC5tcy8yMzE0NDA1Mi9vcmlnaW4uanBnIiwiZXhwaXJlc19hdCI6MTYxNzU4MDI3MH0.GGo1eIDplqDP3QMJCcjAvWi3yKP00ETazc8VccYPY_Y/img.jpg?width=980" id="5805e" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="6d074ceed98430a5947fcd7d937d629b" data-rm-shortcode-name="rebelmouse-image" />The Amônia River in the state of Acre. It crosses the indigenous reservation named for it, which is home to the Ashaninka in Brazil. Diego Gurgel / Government of Acre
Acknowledgement of Guilt Was Decisive
<p>The R$ 14 million will be paid to the indigenous people in installments over a period of five years. The ultimate beneficiaries of the compensation will be decided annually at an Ashaninka assembly, but it is required to be applied to projects "in defense of the community itself, the Amazon, the indigenous peoples and the peoples of the forest."</p><p>"Our resources will go to maintaining and bringing back our values. We are calling for this region to be increasingly respected and valued, for its products to be placed on the market with added value, which will, in turn, serve to guarantee sustainability. This is what are going to do: we are not going to stop," promises Francisco Piyãko, whose father, Antônio Piyãko, was the man responsible for <a href="http://cpiacre.org.br/conteudo/2020/04/09/reparacao-historica-ao-povo-ashaninka/" target="_blank">reporting the invasion to the world through an open letter published in 1991</a>.</p><p>On top of the damages paid to the Ashaninka, the logging companies will also have to pay R$6 million (US$1.2 million) to the Human Rights Defense Fund as compensation for the harm caused to society as a whole.</p><p>Still, for the Ashaninka, the high point of the settlement with the logging companies was the official apology, contained in the agreement signed by all parties.</p><p>"In the face of all the facts narrated and discussed at length for years in the Courts, (the logging companies) formally extend an official apology to the Ashaninka Community of the Amônia River for all the ills caused, respectfully recognizing the enormous importance of the Ashaninka people as guardians of the forest, dutiful in the preservation of the environment and in the conservation and dissemination of their customs and culture," the settlement states.</p><p>"If there had been no acknowledgement of guilt, the indigenous people would not have taken the deal," asserts Rodrigo, attorney for the Ashaninka.</p><p>According to Piyãko, this moral reparation transcends the financial settlement, symbolizing a victory for all the traditional peoples of Brazil and the world for the usurpation of their lands and traditional ways of life.</p><p>"Many indigenous communities have to see themselves in this acknowledgement, because there are things that cannot be paid in money," comments the Ashaninka leader. "Our intention is for this official apology to be the recognition of an error committed and (a promise) that, from this point on, it will be repeated no longer. And let it serve as a reference for other companies, because some laws and rights must be regarded and respected."</p><img lazy-loadable="true" src="https://assets.rebelmouse.io/eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9.eyJpbWFnZSI6Imh0dHBzOi8vYXNzZXRzLnJibC5tcy8yMzE0NDA1My9vcmlnaW4uanBnIiwiZXhwaXJlc19hdCI6MTYzMTI4OTIxN30._J7xanpd8WWUA9UduaoTuIxhnImkUivLSidNpt2Y9VI/img.jpg?width=980" id="438f3" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="ba215854fa2adb0418d6a2ab5e4e389d" data-rm-shortcode-name="rebelmouse-image" />Francico Piyãko in a celebration of the Ashaninka people. Arison Jardim / The Ashaninka of the Amônia River Associatio
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Aerial view of the Esperanca IV informal gold mining camp, near the Menkragnoti indigenous territory, in Altamira, Para state, Brazil, in the Amazon basin, on August 28, 2019. Joao LAET / AFP / Getty Images
By Peter Yeung
From the skies above Creporizao, a remote town in the south of the Brazilian Amazon, the surrounding area looks like a vast blanket of dark green rainforest. But along the dirt roads and rivers that run through it like arteries are telling patches of muddy brown: illegal gold mines.
<p>Wildcat miners come to the area seeking their fortune. Every day, hundreds of laborers embark on long journeys up and down the Crepori river to reach the gold pits, while others fly in on small planes that land on makeshift airstrips. Such scenes have become common across the world's largest rainforest, and are being held up as the cause of widespread destruction.<br></p><p>Jose Maria, a miner from the state of Maranhao, some 1,000 kilometers (620 miles) to the east — who does not reveal his full name — is waiting on the river banks for a ride. "We're here to do honest work and earn a living," he said. "I don't see what the problem is."</p>
<p>But the pits where Jose Maria and fellow miners work are located on the more than two million-hectare territory of the Munduruku, one of the largest indigenous tribes in the Amazon, whose mineral-rich lands are protected under Brazil's 1988 Constitution.</p><p>A 2019 survey by polling institute Datafolha showed 86% of Brazilians oppose mining on indigenous territory, yet it has been encouraged by Brazilian president <a href="https://www.dw.com/en/brazils-bolsonaro-proposes-bill-allowing-mining-on-indigenous-land/a-52273665" target="_blank">Jair Bolsonaro's controversial bill, which calls for the legalization of commercial mining on indigenous land.</a></p><p>Submitted to Brazil's Congress in early February, the bill has yet to be put to a vote. A planned ballot was pushed back with the president of the Chamber of Deputies, Rodrigo Maia, telling Congress it was "not the right moment." But he also stressed that the bill was "not unconstitutional."</p>
<p>Brazil's Ministry of Mines and Energy told DW it was planning to "regulate activities" on indigenous land, adding that the process would require "consultation with the indigenous communities," which would be able to participate in mining activity.</p><p>While some in the Munduruku have been won over by the allure of riches, and allow gold extraction on their land in exchange for money, the majority remain opposed to illegal mining.</p>
'Full-scale gold rush'
<p>About 13% of Brazil's territory is classified as indigenous land, spread across more than 400 reserves. But <a href="https://www.amazoniasocioambiental.org/en/" target="_blank">according to the Amazon Geo-Referenced Socio-Environmental Information Network</a>, there are more than 450 illegal mining sites in the Brazilian Amazon, where most of those reserves are located.</p><p>The proposed law would likely lead to a dramatic rise in the level of mining activity.</p><p>"Once you open the door, it will become a flood," Glenn Shepard, an American anthropologist who works with indigenous populations affected by illegal mining, told DW. "The law will create a precedent for miners to go in. It's already a full-scale gold rush going on, and these indigenous groups are losing control."</p><p>Greenpeace's journalism team, Unearthed, has reported that <a href="https://unearthed.greenpeace.org/2020/04/03/coronavirus-brazil-amazon-gold-rush-indigenous-groups-deforestation/" target="_blank">gold miners planned to continue working through the coronavirus pandemic</a>, increasing fears of spreading the disease to indigenous groups. </p><p>In advance of the vote on the bill, the Ministry of Mines and Energy told DW it had received more than 4,000 applications for mining-related activities on indigenous land.</p><p><a href="https://www.dw.com/en/brazilian-indigenous-tribesmen-shot-in-hit-and-run-attack/a-51574624" target="_blank">Tensions between miners and local communities are already high.</a> In June last year, Brazil's indigenous rights agency, Funai, reported dozens of miners dressed in military uniform invading the Wajapi community, in the Brazilian Amazon, stabbing and killing one of its leaders.</p><p><a href="https://www.globalwitness.org/en/press-releases/spotlight-criminalisation-land-and-environmental-defenders/" target="_blank">According to research by international NGO, Global Witness</a>, 20 land and environmental defenders were killed in Brazil in 2018 alone. Globally, the nonprofit cited mining as the deadliest sector, with 46 reported murders in the same year.</p>
The deforestation issue
<p>Environmentally, <a href="https://www.dw.com/en/amazon-sees-alarming-rise-in-deforestation/a-51668498" target="_blank">one of the biggest impacts of mining is logging.</a> A 2017 report published in the journal Nature Communications found that mining accounted for 9% of all forest loss in the Amazon between 2005 and 2015.</p><p>Satellite <a href="https://maaproject.org/2020/gold_brazil/" target="_blank">analysis </a>published by the Monitoring of the Andean Amazon Project revealed that 2,000 hectares of gold mining-related deforestation occurred in 2019 across the Munduruku indigenous reserve, more than double the amount recorded the year before.</p><p>Last November dozens of tribal leaders from the Amazon met with officials in Brasilia to file claims and report serious threats to their territories.</p><p>Alessandra Korap Munduruku, a leader from Para state who attended the meeting, says the legalization of mining would "be the death of our people."</p><p>Besides bringing "disease and prostitution to our people, drug addiction to our children, and violent conflict to the Munduruku men," she said gold mining activity is also killing fish through mercury poisoning.</p><p>Released across the region's major Tapajos River during the mining process, mercury is seeping into the tributaries like those that snake past the mining town of Creporizao. Local communities rely on these rivers for many of their water needs.</p><p>Late last year, in the first study of its kind, Erik Jennings, a neurologist based in the city of Santarem, took blood and hair samples from 112 tribespeople to assess mercury levels.</p><p>"It's a slow genocide," Jennings told DW. "The mercury can cause serious cognitive and visual impairment, and deform fetuses."</p>
Problematic legal trade
<p>Even the legal gold trade in Brazil is largely unregulated, which facilitates illegal business and plays a significant role in the destruction of the Amazon. Prosecutors in Para state say the lack of regulation in the legal trade and the fact that receipts are paper-based carbon copies make it easy for criminals to thrive and illegal gold to enter the legal system.</p><p>"The practice of fraud in the sector is quite easy, and the investigation of illegalities becomes an almost insurmountable obstacle," Luis de Camoes Lima Boaventura, public prosecutor in the Amazonian city of Santarem said.</p><p>"Until a computerized system is installed, the authorities cannot check, in real time, the legality of the transactions. To make a transaction of illegal gold, all you currently need is a pen and paper."</p><p>According to National Mining Agency estimates, around 30 tons of gold worth some 4.5 billion reals ($1.1 billion, €900 million) are illegally traded in the state of Para annually. That is around six times more than the amount legally declared.</p><p>When miners like Jose Maria return to Creporizao at the end of what can be days away, they come to one of a dozen gold shops that line the main drag to melt what they have mined into standardized bars. Once that is done, illegally-mined gold, which is responsible for widespread deforestation, pollution and violence in the Amazon, has entered the system and can no longer be traced.</p>From Your Site Articles
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