The Brazilian development agenda driving Amazon devastation
Authors: Mat Hope
Journal: The Lancet Planetary Health (2019)

It was an image that stunned the world. In August, 2019, the skies over Sau Paulo gradually turned black. The cause: smoke from the raging Amazon fires. For weeks, the blazes continued. The fires quickly became the worst in more than a decade. Fingers of blame started pointing as one of the world's most important carbon stores went up in flames. For many, Brazil's populist president, Jair Bolsonaro, was most at fault. Why? Because Bolsonaro had run his presidential campaign explicitly in the interests of small ranchers, big agribusinesses, and against Indigenous Amazonian communities. The fires were seen as a result of his dichotomous agenda, which pitched economic development against the preservation of the forest and the protection of the peoples that inhabit it. The National Institute for Space Research (INPE) recorded more than 74 000 Amazon fires between January and August, 2019. An area larger than Ireland was affected. There were worse fires in the mid-2000s, but not since 2009 had the Amazon experienced destruction on this scale. This season's fires were the largest since measurements began in 2012, and an 80% increase in 2019 compared with 2018, INPE's data shows. The fires released the equivalent of 228 megatonnes of carbon dioxide, driving climate change. They also released carbon monoxide and dangerous particulate matter, both of which have significant implications for human health. The fires were a major global problem because the Amazon's trees are extremely old and absorb a lot of carbon dioxide, helping to limit climate change. The Amazon rainforest is also home to a mind-boggling number of species making it a global hotspot for biodiversity which is undergoing rapid decline. Species with low mobility, such as insects and vertebrates including turtles, lizards, and amphibians were unlikely to escape the fires. More mobile species like Jaguars, capybara, freshwater dolphins, sloths, armadillos, tapirs, and more than 1000 species of birds also rely on the forest for food and shelter. No wonder Cristiana Paşca Palmer, the executive secretary of the UN Convention on Biological Diversity, called the fires “extraordinarily concerning” for natural systems. Nonetheless, on Sept 24, 2019, President Bolsonaro told the UN General Assembly that it was a “fallacy” to suggest that “the Amazon is the heritage of humankind”. The disaster had “aroused” Brazil's “patriotic sentiment”, Bolsonaro said, accusing those that tried to claim the fires were anything other than a domestic problem were questioning “what is most sacred to us: our sovereignty!” For Christian Poirier, a campaigner with US-based Amazon Watch, Bolsonaro's speech deliberately misrepresented the international response, however. “Brazil is a sovereign country. Of course it is. No one's questioning that. But the fact that Brazil is not doing its duty to protect one of the most important biomes for the climate is definitely cause for legitimate global concern and action”, he said. Why was Bolsonaro's response so robust? In a word: development. Professor Anthony Pereira, Director of the Brazil Institute at King's College London, explains how the president has a very simple logic when it comes to Amazonian conservation: “Bolsonaro himself seems to have a strongly dichotomous view that you either develop the Amazon and destroy a lot of the forest or you preserve.” With such an approach, the president and his Partido Social Liberal party are hoping to appeal to a specific subset of voters, Pereira explains: “One of the constituencies that Bolsonaro and his administration is appealing to are fairly small scale loggers, miners and ranchers in the Amazon itself.” “There's also some appeal to bigger companies, including multinationals, who know that there's a lot of mineral wealth in the Amazon region, and they want to open things up to them. Some of it is big agriculture businesses.” “Brazilian politics is very much about creating a confederation across the 26 states and the federal district. And most of the governors in the Amazon, in what is called the legal Amazon, are in parties allied to Bolsonaro in Congress. And most of them like the deforestation message because it is a vote winner for them in their local areas.” Dr Andreza A De Souza Santo, Lecturer and Director of the Brazilian Studies Programme at the Latin American Centre, University of Oxford, agrees that Bolsonaro's approach is deliberately simplistic, but argues that it could also be effective in the short-term. “Of course, things have changed and it is possible to have a very different model of development—but the way Bolsonaro's approach delivers is different in terms of timing, profits, and distribution. So it's a choice, because this model of development that is extractivist and aggressive delivers really quickly, but it benefits very few people and it leaves a big environmental impact.” The Amazon fires weren't just a consequence of Bolsonaro's old fashioned development rhetoric, however. For many, Bolsonaro is using deforestation as a means to implement a much more sinister agenda, attacking the rights of Indigenous peoples. Bolsonaro has previously said that protecting indigenous lands was a “nonsense”. In his speech to the UN in September, 2019, he claimed NGOs seeking to protect indigenous lands were “treating and keeping our natives as cavemen”. As well as opening the region up for development, deforesting the Amazon destroys swathes of Indigenous land. That those agendas go hand in hand is not a coincidence, Pereira says. “You can't really get away from the Indigenous question when you think about deforestation of the Amazon because so much of the rainforest has been set aside in Indigenous reserves and environmental reserves.” “Bolsonaro thinks that the reserves are way too big; bigger than they need. He seems to think that Indigenous people want to assimilate and that they don't want to live the way they've been living. And that you have to diminish the size of these reserves and turn parts of them over to developments like mining and ranching”, he said. The attacks on Indigenous lands are particularly problematic as the communities are very effective conservationists. An Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change special report, released in August, 2019, acknowledged the vital role Indigenous communities play in understanding how to tackle climate change's impact on soils, forests, and food security. Alain Frechette, a director of Rights and Resources, a coalition of over 200 groups representing Indigenous communities, said in a statement that the report was “a critical reminder from the world's top scientists that there is already an effective solution to this crisis in place: recognizing the rights of the indigenous peoples and local communities who have cared for the world's forests for generations.” Despite this, no one should be surprised by Bolsonaro unapologetic reaction to the Amazon fires, given the tone of his campaign, according to Amazon Watch's Poirier. “Indigenous peoples in their territories are a clear impediment to the aggressive expansion of Brazilian agribusiness today. They represent lands off the market,” he said. “During his election campaign he ran on a platform that was entirely anti-human rights and anti-environmental. So he's basically doing what he said he would do.” Despite the international community's condemnation, Bolsonaro and his government didn't actually start the fires. Many of the fires were sparked not by large agribusinesses, but small freeholders. However, it's unfair to blame those individuals for a global failure to properly protect such an important carbon stock and hub of biodiversity, argues Associate Professor Jeffrey Hoelle, a cultural anthropologist based at the University of California, Santa Barbra. “There are illegal activities, there are big guys, but there are also these smallholders who—when you add it all up—add a lot of burning and deforestation. But they're usually doing it to provide for their family. They don't have any sort of technological alternative to these very basic rudimentary technologies of burning and cutting,” he points out. “There's a lot of really admirable pioneers who left poverty or tenement farming situations in the south or left the slums in an attempt to get their own piece of land. And they start with a small little clearing and they are not living the life of luxury by any means. We would consider them heroes in a previous century, and they still see themselves in that way.” So how can this be stopped? By properly pricing the value of the Amazon, Hoelle says: “There are ways to keep this in check. A lot of it boils down to money. Either not having a market for a product because it's classified as illegally deforested, or we need the stick but also the carrot—let's try to finally figure out a way to create value for these forests.” That way, Bolsonaro's anti-Indigenous community rhetoric and pro-development pro-destruction policy agenda will be blunted, as his core constituency will no longer be open to appeals to destroy the Amazon in the name of development. This is not a new idea, but it has so far proved very difficult to implement—not least when governments such as Bolsonaro's have an ideological objection to forest conservation. Some argue that the Amazon fires show current international efforts falling under the umbrella of Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation policies (known as REDD) have failed. Others argue the fires show the market-led efforts are more vital than ever. Ultimately, perhaps the only way to address the issue is to try and change the perspective of those tasked with preserving the world's increasingly valuable carbon stores. “You have to question, is this really a good strategy?” De Souza Santos says. “Politically, internationally—for the image of Brazil—and economically, it is all very costly,” she argues. But until Bolsonaro and others accept that, the Amazon will remain a treasure with scarce protection. Forr the full statement from Alain Frechette see https://rightsandresources.org/en/blog/ipcc-agrees-with-indigenous-peoples-and-local-communities-on-climate-change/#targetText=In%20response%20to%20the%20report,tropical%20forest%E2%80%94issued%20a%20statement Forr the full statement from Alain Frechette see https://rightsandresources.org/en/blog/ipcc-agrees-with-indigenous-peoples-and-local-communities-on-climate-change/#targetText=In%20response%20to%20the%20report,tropical%20forest%E2%80%94issued%20a%20statement