Flush with corruption cash, Brazilian states step up deforestation fight
BRAZIL Brazilian states are bolstering the fight against destruction of the Amazon rainforest with millions of dollars from an oil company’s corruption settlement that allows them to partially compensate for weakening environmental protections under President Jair Bolsonaro. State environmental agencies will have a oneoff windfall that Reuters calculates will total at least 140 million reais ($27 million). The cash, which comes from a massive settlement payment from staterun oil firm Petrobras, will be spent on patrol officers, jeeps, surveillance technology and other outlays to protect the rainforest, officials in all nine Amazon states told Reuters. The amount of money going to the state environmental agencies has not been previously reported. Deforestation in Brazil’s Amazon climbed to an 11year high in 2019 and continues to rise this year. That has coincided with a decline in resources at Brazil’s federal environment agency Ibama. Its budget has been repeatedly cut in recent years and it now has less than half the 1,600 field agents it had in 2009. Although the fall in funding began before Bolsonaro, environmental advocates blame him for worsening the situation by weakening protections for the rainforest. Bolsonaro has railed against what he sees as overzealous environmental regulation getting in the way of economic development.
(Reuters)