Larcher has had a difficult year. As technical coordinator of a conservation institute in the vast Pantanal wetlands in western Brazil, Larcher spent 2020 facing a record wave of wildfires that destroyed 22% of the Pantanal, a domain approximately 12 times larger than Rhode Island full of rare wildlife, including jaguars and macaws. He also saw a season of devastating fires tearing apart a component of the Brazilian component of the Amazon rainforest, the worst in a decade.
And for the most sensible thing, on Monday, Brazil’s Environment Minister Ricardo Salles added the country’s exclusive landscapes to Larcher’s list of concerns. Salles announced the end of two legal protections for mangroves and restinga coastal forests, arguing that the protections were “excessively restrictive. “and “suffocating economic development. “
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His decision was temporarily suspended through a federal court following a lawsuit filed for violating Brazilians’ constitutional right to an ecologically balanced environment. However, the resolution opened a new battlefield in one of the fiercest wars to be waged in Brazil under the far-right presidency. Jair Bolsonaro.
“It’s very frustrating,” Larcher says, noting that he studied mangroves and scrub forests for his PhD before joining conservation efforts at the Pantanal. Both consist of resilient shrubs and plants that scientists must have to protect the land from coastal erosion and harbor biodiversity. and sequester carbon from the environment to curb the greenhouse effect. “Salles is the minister of the environment: his role is to make decisions for the environment, not for other groups. “
This is not unforeseen in the Salles component, nicknamed “The Terminator” among Brazilian climate activists. Appointed through Bolsonaro in December 2018, the 45-year-old led a decisive crusade to reform Brazil’s environmental establishments and eliminate regulations.
In May, a video of a ministerial meeting, broadcast as part of a Supreme Court investigation into Bolsonaro, captured Salles telling the president that they deserved media fear of the COVID-19 pandemic “to move forward and replace all regulations and simplify standards. “In July, the federal prosecutor’s workplace filed an application to dismiss Salles on the grounds that “it violates his duty to protect the environment. “The case has not yet been reviewed and prosecutors sent him back to federal court on Monday.
Activists say Salles seeks to appease certain spaces of activity that are a very important component of the president’s base. “He is doing precisely the task assigned to him,” says Rumulo Batista, spokesman for Greenpeace Brazil’s Amazon campaign. , is by far the worst minister in the environment since Brazil returned to democracy “more than 30 years ago. “
In October, a 17-year-old weather activist broke into a public hearing at the Brazilian congress to hand over a trophy to Salles, which read “O Exterminador do Futuro”, the Brazilian call for the 1984 post-apocalyptic film The Terminator. they have used the call to refer to Salles’ paintings as minister previously, adding former environment minister Marina Silva, when she and seven former environmental ministers, who had served in Brazilian governments across the political spectrum, warned of the speed with which Bolsonaro and Salles canceled their paintings.
Prior to his appointment to the federal government, Salles head of the Decomponent of the Environment of the State of Sao Paulo, where he was convicted through a state court for “administrative dishonesty”, in component for his role in the modification of maps in a plan state environmental. to obtain advantages from mining companies. At the time, he said he planned to appeal the decision.
So far this year, Salles has used less than 0. 4% of the Ministry of the Environment’s budget for federal policy initiatives, according to a study by the Climate Observatory, a network of Brazilian civil society groups. The minister brazened a large number of public servants. adding those who disagree with debatable decisions, and left vacancies. In recent months, environmental media such as Mongabay have reported that environmental firm staff have been intimidated by talking to the media. In May of this year, Salles attempted to move the right to move forest spaces to personal corporations from the Ministry of the Environment to the Ministry of Agriculture; the motion blocked through a federal court that said legislative approval was needed. Meanwhile, Ibama, the environmental company under the Ministry of Salles, has regulations that allow the export of illegally cut wood, a key factor in deforestation in the Amazon.
Addressing his latest setback in mangroves and subtractions, Salles told CNN Brazil Monday that existing protections for coastal spaces were a “typical example” of “policies built from a sure kind of radicalism” that he had been looking to undo since he joined the government. In his view, the complex bureaucratic regulations of Brazil’s environment restrict the country’s progress and want to be simplified, arguing that restrictions on mangroves and rest areas inspire crime and the illegal destruction of the environment by restricting communities’ economic opportunities and leaving spaces without human presence to control them. Citing The Minister of Economy of Bolsonaro, Paulo Guedes, Salles told the television channel: “Poverty is the worst enemy in the environment. “(Salles’ workplace did not respond to TIME’s request for comments. )
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Another pillar of the minister’s environment philosophy is the confidence that if the foreign network is concerned about the destruction of the environment in Brazil, it deserves to pay to avoid it, such as President Bolsonaro, who last year told German Chancellor Angela Merkel that “reforesting Germany” than worrying about the Amazon – he has lasted against foreigners concerned about the affairs of the Brazilian environment. In September, after Leonardo DiCaprio shared a video criticizing deforestation in the Amazon, Salles told him on Twitter to “put his money where he is” and sponsor this week, he announced that he would create a new personal carbon market this week, in which European corporations will pay Brazil to carry out conservation projects to offset its carbon emissions , a concept that climate experts consider deeply problematic.
For critics, Salles’ schedule is designed only to serve teams that politically help their boss. According to Marcio Astrini, executive director of the Climate Observatory, these teams come with developers and agribusiness interests who would benefit from the rest of the land regulations as well as teams looking to illegally bet land on the Amazon to grow or seek gold. Brazilian media reported that Salles held meetings with illegal land hoarders and gold miners during his tenure.
Batista, of Greenpeace, says politics from Brasilia is contributing to fires ravaging the Amazon and Pantanal. Measures such as weakening logging regulations and not investment conservation efforts are having a transparent impact. But also, he said, Salles has disturbed a “culture of impunity that we have in Brazil for those engaged in anti-environmental crimes. “Less than 5% of the fines imposed through Ibama end up paying, he says.
In the Pantanal, state governments and federal agencies have sent firefighters to help fight the flames. (The Homem Pantaneiro Institute, where Larcher works, is increasing the budget for a permanent firefighting corps to deal with the Pantanal, as climate change is likely to occur. worst fires next year. )
But much more may have been done with this year’s devastation, according to Larcher. The government has not adequately funded measures such as the removal of dead plants from public spaces, he said, which would have slowed the spread of fires. “Mattogrossense Pantanal The National Park covers 135,000 hectares and has [few] employees. How are they going to do all the work, control and prevention on their own to make sure those spaces don’t catch fire?»
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Twelve prosecutors signed the July application to dismiss Salles from office, accusing the minister of seeking to “dismantle the institutional and regulatory structures of federal environmental coverage agencies. “The Ministry of the Environment brazened prosecutors for “expressing a political-ideological bias in a transparent attempt to interfere with the federal government’s public policies. “The case is still known.
But Astrini, of the Climate Observatory, said Salles’ resignation probably would not solve Brazil’s environmental problems. “Rooms is simply a very smart employee. It’s very vital that they check to remove it, but if he leaves, Bolsonaro will. another user to complete their program. “
The hope that Brazilian environmentalists will retain protections lies in the judiciary. Federal courts have blocked the replacement of a rule through the government firm of Aboriginal Rights FUNAI, which would have allowed landowners on Aboriginal lands to officially sign their property. several Salles decisions in court, adding his inability to use his budget, the rest of Ibama’s timber regulations and, now, the elimination of coastal wetland protections.
International tension is also another vital tool. In July, 29 global corporations sent an open letter to Vice President Hamilton Mouraou warning that they would not be able to invest in Brazil if there was an “unacceptable threat to contribute to serious environmental or human rights degradation. “Shortly after meeting with an organization of business leaders, the government announced a 120-day ban on burning fires in the Amazon, twice as much as the moratorium originally implemented in 2019. The ban has not been implemented enough to save the spread of some 30,000 fires through the rainforest in August. However, the threat of wasting an industry agreement with the European Union can only force further concessions, and several EU Member States expressed fear in September about the implications for Amazon.
Given Bolsonaro and Salles’ public statements about the judiciary and the foreign community, Astrini says, such tension will not fundamentally replace its program. “We’re not going to replace your genuine outlook on the environment,” says Astrini. “But with enough tension, we would possibly be to neutralize the environmental setbacks they create. “
For Larcher, who examines the destruction on the floor of the Pantanal, the long history of environmentalism in Brazil is grim. “It’s very difficult to be positive right now,” he says. We’re not many other people with little cash. “and a lot of work. The fire makes you think, where will it end?