Sleaze sinks US efforts to save the Amazon
Bolsonaro’s environment chief accused of running an illegal timber operation out of Brazilian rainforest
EVER since Brazil’s environment chief suggested “running the cattle herd” through the Amazon, hopes that the country would halt deforestation have been dashed.
A little over a year later, the man who should be the leading voice on protecting the world’s biggest carbon sink is now accused of running an illegal timber operation out of the rainforest.
Ricardo Salles – appointed as Jair Bolsonaro’s environment minister in 2018 – faces a criminal investigation into clandestine exports to the EU and the US. Mr Salles denied any wrongdoing and called the operation “exaggerated” and “unnecessary” last month.
The investigation is not just damaging on a domestic level. Mr Salles’s toxic presence in the Bolsonaro administration has undermined optimistic efforts by Joe Biden to work with Brazil to protect the Amazon.
Last year, the US president promised to reverse the country’s role as a climate laggard, including pledging $20billion (£14billion) to help save the rainforest.
Halting and even reversing destruction in the Amazon has become a way for Mr Biden to prove that the US can be a global leader on climate change g once again. But dealing ling with Brazil is proving tricky. ricky.
Ahead of a virtual climate summit mit in April hosted by Mr Biden, Mr Salles lles led calls for direct ct payment to end deforeforestation, saying ng
Brazil would ld need a $10billion annual fund from the rest of the world to be carbon neutral by 2050. In the lead-up to the summit, Mr Salles was having frequent talks with John Kerry, Biden’s climate tsar. A trip to the UK by Mr Salles was also on the cards.
But shortly before the summit, nearly 200 Brazilian civil society groups and 15 US senators separately wrote to the administration, appealing for him to back away from doing a direct deal, and arguing g g that it was “not sensible to expect any solution solutions for the Amazon to stem fro from closed-door meetings w with its worst enemy”.
“It wa was made very clear from a wide range of civil s society groups that a de deal with Bolsonaro wou would have been worse t than nothing,” said Daniel D Brindis, inter international strategy adviser at Gre Greenpeace US. The police investigation of Mr Salles may also have caused a re-evaluation of who in the Bolsonaro government is a credible negotiator. “I think they have taken a step back and taken stock,” said Mr Brindis. Since coming to power in 2019, Mr Bolsonaro has built himself a reputation as a climate sceptic.
Under his presidency, deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon has hit a 12-year high as his government has loosened environmental regulations.
In April alone, 224 square miles of forest – an area equivalent to the size of Leeds – were destroyed, an all-time record for the month.
Diplomatic observers say there is no chance of keeping the goals of the Paris Agreement within reach without getting Brazil to the table. Not only has the Brazilian Amazon flipped from being a carbon sink to being an emitter in recent years, but Brazil is holding back its cooperation on the remaining unsolved principles of the agreement.
As Mr Kerry told the US Congress last month: “If we don’t talk to them, you can be sure that forest will disappear.”
Certainly, Mr Bolsonaro is finding it harder to make alliances against climate action; even China has an ambition to be carbon neutral by 2060.
And he has dropped hints that he may be willing to reverse course on his environmental record, at a price.
There is a recognition that protecting the rainforest will require funding for Brazil. But green groups in both Brazil and the US say Mr Bolsonaro has yet to prove that he’s a changed man.
Last month, Brazil’s congress approved a bill easing environmental licensing laws countrywide, which NGOs say will effectively legalise destruction in the Amazon.
That is just one of the 57 legislative measures introduced by the Bolsonaro government to weaken environmental controls, over half of which came during the pandemic, according to the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro.
“The Bolsonaro government is trying to legalise the exploitation of the Amazon at all costs, causing irreparable damage to our land, people and life on this planet,” said Alberto Terena, of the Articulation of Indigenous Peoples in Brazil activist group.
While several members of Mr Bolsonaro’s original cabinet have come and gone amid public scandals and rifts with the president, Mr Salles is one of the few who have dodged his boss’s axe.
Despite the mounting criminal cases, Mr Bolsonaro appears unwilling to part with his loyal environmental ally.