The president of Brazil, Jair Bolsonaro, assured this Friday that the news that warns of an irreversible destruction of the Amazon by increasing deforestation and multiple fires are false and propagated by opponents who want to affect the image of the country and scare away investments.
“If deforestation had the proportions they are saying, the Amazon would already be a desert“said the far-right leader in a live broadcast that he did on social networks when he returned after his trip to the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain and Qatar.
Later, he admitted the existence of illegal logging and deliberate fires, although he took responsibility for it: “There is illegal deforestationBut it is enough that other countries do not buy our wood, it is simple. There are also illegal burns, but not in that proportion that they count. And we fight them. Some say ‘they have to fight them more’ … Do you know the size of the Amazon, how many countries in Europe can fit? “
Along the same lines, the president downplayed the alarming data on the destruction of the world’s largest rainforest a day after the government itself reported that the Brazilian Amazon lost 13,235 square kilometers of vegetation cover between August 2020 and July 2021, the largest degraded area for a twelve-month period in the last 15 years.
Illegal logging and deforestation are one of the great problems facing the Brazilian Amazon. AFP photo.
“While we strive like unfortunates to bring a good image of Brazil abroad, lousy Brazilians come out to criticize the country, tell lies about the Amazon“, he pointed.
The increase in deforestation in the period 2020-2021 calls into question Brazil’s promise to reverse this trend and eliminate illegal deforestation by 2028, as promised in the last conference of the HIM-HER-IT on climate change, COP26.
At that Glasgow summit, a report was presented claiming that the Amazon “is at a point of no return and it can become a desert. “
Before that statement, Bolsonaro reacted: “This is the same old nonsense. It is news sponsored by Brazilians who work against the country, drive away investments and generate many economic difficulties. “
“So far I haven’t seen a Californian saying California is on fire or a Chinese criticizing his country for requiring quarantines against pollution. I never saw anyone speaking badly of their country like the Brazilians do“, full.
The fires in the Amazon
In 2020, 222,000 fires were recorded in the Brazilian Amazon. AFP photo.
Bolsonaro became a mockery when he recently said that the Amazon does not catch fire and that the majority are unaware that the fires in the region occur in its peripheries and not in the interior of the jungle.
“The sources of fire are always in the same place and are generally caused by indigenous people, settlers and fishermen who have subsistence crops and set fire to prepare the land for new crops,” he said, minimizing the fires caused by large landowners.
However, the INPE data deny the declarations of the president. According to the state agency, 2,305 fires were registered in the Amazon last June alone, the highest number for the month since 2007.
According to INPE, the most critical year was 2020, when a record 222,000 fires.
With information from agencies.
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