The elected president promised to “fight for zero deforestation” and “resume monitoring and surveillance” of the largest tropical forest in the world.
The elected president of Brazil, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, faces the immense challenge of satisfying international expectations to stop the destruction of the Amazon, key to the fight against climate change. “The Amazon is badly damaged. We need a plan,” says Luciana Gatti of Brazil’s national space agency.
Lula, who will assume his third presidency after governing between 2003 and 2010, assured that he will respond to the emergency.
The planet “needs a living Amazon”he said the night of his electoral victory against the far-right president Jair Bolsonaro.
In particular, Lula has promised to “fight for zero deforestation” and to “resume monitoring and surveillance” of the world’s largest tropical forest.
With Bolsonaro
Under Bolsonaro, a skeptic of global warming, Amazon deforestation increased by more than 70%according to official statistics.
In real numbers, deforestation figures at the beginning of Lula’s first administration were higher, but after his two terms they were reduced by 70%, according to the same sources.
Long before taking office on January 1, the PT leader is scheduled to attend the COP27 climate meeting in Egypt, which opens on Sunday, after being invited by Egyptian President Abdel Fatah al-Sisi.
the country is “ready to take back its place in the fight against the climate crisis”assured.
International leaders included allusions to the environment in their congratulations to Lula after his electoral victory.
Norway announced that will resume its aid for the protection of the Amazon and Germany likewise stated its intention to do so. These aids have been suspended since 2019 as a result of Bolsonaro’s policies.
So where to start?
“Lula will have to act firmly from the beginning to practically redefine the set of operations of the federal government in the Amazon region,” said Suely Araujo, a specialist at the Brazilian Climate Observatory and former president of the Brazilian Institute of the Environment (IBAMA), the main state environmental agency.
According to Shenker, the IBAMA institute and the governmental National Indian Foundation (FUNAI) they need “financial resources and political will” after being sidelined by Bolsonaro.
The current Brazilian president considered the agencies an impediment to economic progress, by delaying permits for logging, agribusiness and mining in the Amazon.
Lula “can also put an end to the dangerous proposals” being debated in Congress, Shenker said in reference to a bill that could increase mining on indigenous lands.
For Araujo, Lula must “immediately resume climate policy, completely weakened in the Bolsonaro government.”
Brazil, noted has become a “pariah” in climate negotiationsand needs to align its policies with the Paris Agreement.
The wealth
Stretching across nine countries, the Amazon is the largest of the world’s few remaining virgin rainforests.
It has more species and indigenous peoples than any other place on Earth and is home to more than 100 uncontacted tribes.
In that territory, fires and massive deforestation are not new problems.
They existed when Lula was in power, although managed to bring deforestation to historical lows at the end of his second presidency in 2010.
Growing concern over the climate crisis coincided with the massive fires in the Amazon in 2019, when Bolsonaro’s inaction sparked protests around the world.
“The Bolsonaro government represents a deforestation of 50,000 km2”an area the size of Slovakia, said Luciana Gatti, who attributes the damage to the international trade in beef, soybeans and wood.
Gatti suggests declaring a “state of emergency” in the area and launching a reforestation program in the most affected areas, something that Brazilian scientists will propose at COP27.
“Saving that part should be our priority.”
Just getting the Amazon back to the state it was in before Bolsonaro will be a battle, Gatti said. “Today, the Amazon is a lawless place.”
AFP agency
PB