HIGH-RISK REGIMES
– HOW THE BOLSONARO GOVERNMENT HAS FANNED THE FLAMES The government of President Jair Bolsonaro has reduced the number of agents undertaking inspections in the Amazon. This reduction in oversight has been linked not only to increased deforestation rates but also to increased risk of labour crimes.160 The Bolsonaro government appears to see the current chaos of the global pandemic as an opportunity to further strip away communities’ rights and such protection as the forest has.161 Moreover, Indigenous communities – who are particularly at risk from Covid-19 due to their culture of community living and limited access to health care – are at risk of being made yet more vulnerable to the disease by exposure
‘Pass the cattle’ is the title of a January 2021 report published by the coalition Observatório do Clima. Its cover features an image of the Minister of the Environment Ricardo Salles, who made infamous the idiomatic phrase, which refers to pushing a large volume of things through with minimal scrutiny. In an April 2020 ministerial meeting whose minutes were later made public by a decision of the Supreme Court, Salles recommended wholesale deregulation of environmental and other rules while the media were occupied by the Covid-19 pandemic. Since the beginning of the Bolsonaro administration, Salles has systematically worked to dismantle environmental protection, slashed the budget and staffing of the environmental regulatory agency IBAMA and transferred powers from the Ministry of the Environment.
to smoke from the fires that ranchers set on a massive scale to clear newly felled forest.162 Satellite data reveal that between 1 January and 31 October 2020 there were more fire hotspots in the Pantanal than during the previous four years combined over the same period.163 Nevertheless, Brazil’s Institute of the Environment and Renewable Natural Resources (Instituto Brasileiro do Meio Ambiente e dos Recursos Naturais Renováveis, IBAMA) reportedly imposed barely half as many fines for illegal deforestation and fire-setting across the states of Mato Grosso and Mato Grosso do Sul between 1 January and 14 September 2020 as it did in the equivalent period of 2019, reflecting a reduction in enforcement activity in the field that one official says has led to a sense of impunity.164 According to this and other current and former IBAMA officials (including a former president of the institute) interviewed by BBC
This last factor is key: since Bolsonaro came to
News Brasil, while the coronavirus pandemic played a role,
power the federal government has been gradually
the reduction in enforcement efforts was largely due to
transferring to the military responsibilities for
other factors – including massive staff cuts, federal
monitoring and combating illegal deforestation and
government appointments of managers with no relevant
fire use that historically belonged to civilian agencies,
experience (sometimes replacing staff who had been
including IBAMA, ICMBio and FUNAI.167 The government
achieving concrete results), needlessly cumbersome and
has even recently announced that INPE is to be stripped
obstructive new procedures and computer systems, and
of its three-decades-old responsibility for satellite
interference by the military.
monitoring of deforestation and fires).168 As well as
165
166
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