The planet can breathe: Jair Bolsonaro, alias “Chainsaw Captain”, leaves the Planalto, the Brazilian presidential palace with its elegant curvilinear layout. Winner of the October 30 poll, Lula da Silva, who officially takes office on January 1, promises to put an end to the ongoing ecocide in the Amazon. Easier said than done in a region as large as Western Europe and where the outgoing far-right retains strong popular support. Bolsonaro also obtained a greater number of votes there than his opponent, who will begin his third term in January (after the period 2003-2010).
With him, predatory activities were able to flourish with impunity, in the name of a certain idea of ”development”. In four years, the clearing of the Amazon has swallowed up some 46,000 square kilometers of vegetation… the equivalent of the area of Slovakia.
When Lula came to power in January 2003, deforestation broke records. Thanks to a proactive policy, which has tightened controls and deprived the pioneers of loans granted by public banks, the deforestation of the largest tropical forest on the planet has fallen by nearly 70% in eight years. In 2010, it was “only” 7,000 square kilometers, compared to 21,600 square kilometers in 2002. Bolsonarist laissez-faire, on the other hand, results, in the opposite direction, in a 55% increase in a single term. (2019-2022), compared to the previous period (2015-2018).
In Brazil, the world’s fourth largest polluter, land clearing is the main source of greenhouse gas emissions. Long singled out, soy is now only marginally involved in the destruction of the Amazonian ecosystem. International commodity trading companies have indeed undertaken not to acquire seeds grown on deforested plots after 2008. It is now extensive cattle farming that devours the Amazon. Attempts to go back to herders clearing the land are thwarted by “beef laundering”, a practice that consists of transiting cattle reared on deforested plots by farms in good standing with environmental standards before sending them to the slaughterhouse.
The rich indigenous territories do not escape the incursions of breeders, but also of loggers, poachers and gold diggers. Deemed “abusive” by Bolsonaro, environmental governance has been dismantled. Commissioner Alexandre Saraiva knows something about it. The man who led the federal police in the state of Amazonas until June 2021 remembers, incredulous, the intrigues of Ricardo Salles, then Minister of the Environment, to have the offenders (who won their case) returned ) a shipment of over 130,000 cubic meters of timber of illegal origin seized by investigators. Saraiva was fired for having indicted Salles, who will be triumphantly elected deputy of São Paulo…
“By encouraging the devastation of the forest and the violation of the rights of Amerindians, in short, by allying with crime, Jair Bolsonaro has involuntarily forced his opponents to green their program in order to restore the credibility of Brazil, comments for his part Claudio Angelo, spokesperson for the Climate Observatory, a collective of associations. Never before has any Brazilian president, not even Lula during his two previous presidencies, been so ambitious.”
At the podium of COP 27, the United Nations conference on climate change, which was held in November in Egypt, the president-elect has indeed pledged to “reduce to zero, by 2030”, any removal, even partial, of vegetation in all Brazilian ecosystems, Amazonia in the lead. For Raul do Valle, leader of the WWF, the objective is not unrealistic. “Brazil does not need to clear more land to continue to be one of the biggest producers and exporters of foodstuffs. It would be enough to recover the gigantic areas of degraded pastures.”
The experience of “Lula I and II”, as we say here, has already shown: agricultural production had in no way suffered from the decline in clearing. “In any case, we have no choice, continues Raul do Valle. Eventually, the removal of plant cover, which regulates the climate, would lead to a drop in the volume of rainfall which would affect agriculture itself.” This official acknowledges, however, that “far right-aligned agricultural unions do not believe in climate change”.
They are also powerfully relayed to the Chamber of Deputies, where the so-called ruralist lobby will hold 30% of the 513 seats during the new legislature. The growing risk of economic sanctions does not seem to move them. “They are convinced that Brazil is an essential supplier, continues the environmentalist Claudio Angelo. Europe has just given them the denial.” At the beginning of the month, the European Parliament indeed reached an agreement, admittedly still “preliminary”, with the Member States to ban imports of products resulting from deforestation practiced after December 2020. Pending final approval of this agreement , “European legislation remains very permissive on imports of wood, considered an industrial input”, regrets the former police officer Alexandre Saraiva, who maintains that “99% of Brazilian wood destined for the EU is of illegal origin, that is to say, the fruit of the devastation of the primary forest. However, the extraction of tropical wood finances the entire cycle of the destruction of the Amazon”.
A cycle whose starting point is the pure and simple usurpation of the public domain. The occupier seizes the land, clears it and then resells it. Its title deeds are fabricated from scratch. “Lula must prevent the Brazilian Congress from passing yet another amnesty for these usurpers, insists Raul do Valle, of the WWF. Without this, we will not achieve anything in the Amazon.” He also calls for international cooperation, “to remunerate the services rendered to the planet by those who refrain from clearing”. “In particular, we must create sources of income for the Amerindian communities, vulnerable to attempts at co-optation by predatory activities that covet their territories”, adds this connoisseur of the subject.
In this spirit, Lula announced the creation of a Ministry of Indigenous Peoples. He also promises to “strictly punish those responsible for illegal activities”. Claudio Angelo, from the Climate Observatory, predicts a “tense” year 2023. “Organized crime has spread like never before in the Amazon, especially since Bolsonaro has facilitated access to firearms, explains the activist. I do not see these people giving up their weapons and letting themselves be punished by the State.”
The proliferation, without control or very little, of sports shooting clubs – at the rate of one new per day on average – is worrying. The arsenal of their members would reach a million weapons. “The practice of sports shooting has served as a screen to arm the far right, explains lawyer Isabel Figueiredo, member of the Public Security Forum, a specialized think tank. Criminal organizations have taken advantage of this in turn to acquire weapons and ammunition legally.” Here too, Lula promises to act. But the path is narrow, fears Isabel Figueiredo, recalling that the boss of the left was brought to power by a broad coalition whose only cement is the fight against the fascist danger embodied by Bolsonaro. In short, “Lula will have to compose”.
