Troops deployed to curb Amazon deforestation
BRASILIA, Brazil — Brazil’s president is sending troops back to the Amazon rain forest to bolster policing against logging and other illegal land clearance, acting amid international criticism of a surge in deforestation and just two months after withdrawing a similar military mission. Environmentalists are skeptical it will work.
President Jair Bolsonaro’s decree calls for soldiers to go to the states of Para, Amazonas, Mato Grosso and Rondonia through the end of August. The order, which was published Monday in Brazil’s official gazette, didn’t provide details about the number of troops to be deployed nor the cost of the operation.
Amazon deforestation had edged upward for several years, then surged after the 2018 election of Bolsonaro, who repeatedly called for development of the rain forest. Tuesday’s decree comes with Brazil in the midst of a historic drought, and follows a sharp increase in fires in both the Amazon and Pantanal wetlands. The destruction has elicited an international outcry and, more recently, an effort by President Biden’s administration to urge Bolsonaro to get tough on illegal logging.
This will mark the third time that Bolsonaro has dispatched troops to the Amazon, following two “Operation Green Brazil” deployments, the most recent of which ended in April. Each mission involved thousands of soldiers. Still, environmental experts have said the military was illprepared and had limited efficacy.
In 2020, deforestation in Brazil’s Amazon reached a level unseen since 2008, according to official data.
And 98.9% of deforestation had indications of illegality, either done near springs, in protected areas or carried out without requisite authorization, according to data released this month by the MapBiomas Project, a network of nonprofits, universities and technology companies that studies Brazilian land use. Brazil’s environmental regulator levied fines in just 5% of these cases, the group found.
Bolsonaro’s plan to send soldiers comes as the U.S. has called for curbing Amazon deforestation in order to help arrest climate change.