Brazil’s government has passed 57 major legislative acts that weaken environmental protections in the country, and 49 per cent of these were enacted in the seven months since the covid-19 pandemic was declared in March.
Erika Berenguer at the University of Oxford and her colleagues analysed legislation in the 21 months after January 2019, when President Jair Bolsonaro’s administration took power, finding that September 2020 was the month with the highest number of acts that limited environmental protections.
“The way that they are changing the law is through legislative acts that don’t need to go through congress,” says Berenguer, noting that the head of Brazil’s lower house during this period wasn’t an ally of Bolsonaro.
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In May 2020, Brazil’s environment minister, Ricardo Salles, made the government’s intentions clear, calling for further while public attention was focused on the covid-19 pandemic. Reuters reported Salles’s remarks at a ministers’ meeting: “We need to make an effort while we are in this calm moment in terms of press coverage, because they are only talking about COVID, and push through and change all the rules and simplify norms.”
A number of the legislative acts are aimed at dismantling federal institutions in charge of environmental protection. One provides amnesty for deforestation in the Atlantic Forest on Brazil’s east coast, while another reduces protections for coastal mangrove ecosystems.
Berenguer says she was shocked by the breadth of the changes, which include acts that reclassify pesticides as less toxicĚýand reduce the amount of biodiesel that must be added to diesel.
The researchers also found a 72 per cent drop in environmental fines during the pandemic, despite an increase in deforestation of the Amazon during the same period.
The research “shines a light on the government-led strategy to destroy the legal framework that protects Brazil’s environment”, says a spokesperson for environmental organisation the WWF. “It is no coincidence that 2020 was the year with the highest deforestation rates in the Amazon for over 12 years and that the environment budget has been slashed to a 21-year low.”
What is also concerning, says Berenguer, is that environmental administrators in positions of power are being systematically replaced by police or military staff with no environmental expertise.
“We are seeing different attack fronts being used by the current administration, especially during the pandemic,” she says.
“The institutional dismantling and sharp reduction in environmental fines have also global impacts as they threaten climate regulation and may even cause other zoonotic disease outbreaks,” says Paula Bernasconi at the Instituto Centro de Vida, an environmental NGO in Brazil. The encroachment into animal habitats as a result of practices such as deforestation brings humans into more regular contact with disease-carrying wildlife, increasing the risk for transmission of new diseases.
That isn’t the only threat the changes may unleash. “Last year, forest fires got totally out of control due to lack of planning and lack of public resources invested in the environment,” says Bernasconi. She points to fires that devastated the Pantanal, a large wetland system and biodiversity hotspot. “The area burned in 2020 only in the Pantanal represents almost 30 times the area of London,” she says.
To put pressure on the government to reverse these changes, international investors should cut economic ties with Brazil, says Berenguer.
“Until we remove the economic incentives for habitat destruction, it will carry on,” says the WWF spokesperson. “We need new laws in the UK to make importing products that cause deforestation illegal, removing that financial incentive.”
żěè¶ĚĘÓƵ was unable to reach a representative of the Ministry of the Environment of Brazil.
Biological Conservation
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