The equivalent of ten football pitches of tropical forests – 3.7 million hectares – were lost every minute in 2023 as the result of human activities and natural disasters, according to analysis carried out by Global Forest Watch.

While forest destruction slowed dramatically in Brazil and Colombia, this was offset by sharp increases in Bolivia, Nicaragua and Laos.

“The world took two steps forward, two steps back when it comes to this past year’s forest loss”, said Mikaela Weisse, Global Forest Watch Director at the World Resources Institute (WRI).

Tropical forests are one of the world’s best defenses against global warming, as they absorb greenhouse gases. But they are also where over 96% of human-made deforestation occurs worldwide, according to WRI.

Missing targets

While total tree loss in the tropics decreased slightly last year, analysts estimated human-caused deforestation driven by agriculture, commodities extraction and urban expansion continued rising. 

That’s despite a 10% reduction being needed every year to meet a pledge to “halt and reverse forest loss and land degradation by 2030” signed by 145 countries, including large forest nations like Brazil, Indonesia and the Democratic Republic of Congo.

Initially introduced as part of a voluntary commitment by governments at Cop26 in Glasgow, the target was mentioned for the first time in a Cop decision at last December’s climate summit in Dubai.

Weisse said the goal “has always been an ambitious one” and “it will certainly be difficult” to ensure enough progress from all countries to meet the target.

“I still find a lot of hope in the fact that Brazil, Colombia, and Indonesia have managed to massively curb their rates of forest loss in recent years”, she added. “Those countries have demonstrated how critical it is to have strong political will to combat deforestation”.

Lula’s deforestation busting

Brazil continued to be the country that lost the most tropical forest in 2023 because of the size of its immense rainforests. But its losses dropped by more than a third last year, reaching the lowest level since 2015.

Progress in Brazil coincided with the return to office of President Luiz Lula da Silva. In his first full year in the post, he strengthened law enforcement against illegal loggers, revoked anti-environmental measures introduced by his predecessor, Jair Bolsonaro, and extended Indigenous rights.

Brazil is planning to put the protection of forests at the heart of its climate summit in 2025, which is set to take place in Belém, known as the gateway to the Amazon rainforest.

“Holding Cop30 in the heart of the forest is a powerful reminder of our responsibility to keep the planet within our 1.5°C target”, said Marina Silva, Minister for the Environment and Climate Change, last December.

In neighbouring Colombia, the rate of tree loss dropped by half in 2023, primarily as a result of policies introduced by President Gustavo Petro.

Forest protection is among the goals being negotiated by the leftist government with armed groups as part of wider efforts to bring “total peace” and end decades of violence.

Experts have also suggested that criminal groups have taken it upon themselves to rein in illegal logging as a way to strengthen their hand in the discussions.

Progress lost

But positive developments in forest conservation in Brazil and Colombia have been all but cancelled out by tree losses spiralling out of control elsewhere.

In Bolivia, forest losses remained at record-breaking levels for a third year in a row, driven by uncontrolled expansion of soybean and beef production and exacerbated by exceptional wildfires.

The government, which has prioritised development and agricultural exports over forest protection, has not joined the 2030 pledge.

It was at loggerheads with Brazil at the Amazon Summit last year, when it opposed the inclusion of any references to the target in an outcome document signed by the leaders of eight countries.

Dramatic upticks in deforestation were also seen in Nicaragua, in Central America, and Laos, in South-East Asia, last year.

Expectations mount as loss and damage fund staggers to its feet

Nicaragua lost over 4% of its standing forest in 2023 alone, as the authoritarian regime of Daniel Ortega continued to turn a blind eye to illegal logging.

Disregard for the preservation of forests, and the respect of the rights of Indigenous people living there, is also shutting the country’s access to international financial support.

The UN’s Green Climate Fund pulled out of a forest conservation project last month after local community groups complained about a lack of protection in the face of escalating human rights violations in the area.

In Laos, forest loss nearly doubled last year reaching an all-time high. Rapid expansion of farming, primarily driven by Chinese investments, is believed to be the main cause.

Financial incentives

WRI’s Weisse said that, while the cases of Brazil and Colombia demonstrate the importance of political will in reversing deforestation, that alone will not be enough.

“Political winds continuously change”, she added. “In order for progress to endure in any of the above countries will likely take making it more valuable to keep forests standing than to cut them down”.

Carbon credits have long been touted as a primary way to achieve that. But their credibility has come under fire over the last few years as numerous schemes faced allegations of exaggerating climate claims and failing to safeguard local communities. Various efforts to strengthen their rules are underway.

Regulations are also being introduced on the demand side, blocking access to markets for goods produced on deforested land.

In the European Union, firms will soon have to demonstrate that seven commodities, including beef and soy, are not linked to deforestation. Commodities-producing countries, such as Indonesia, have attacked the regulations which they have branded as protectionist.

The post “Two steps forward, two steps back” – Governments off course for forest protection target appeared first on Climate Home News.

Last month, recently elected president Daniel Noboa said in an interview to a local media outlet that he believed that a “moratorium [to the referendum result regarding oil exploitation in the Yasuní] is a viable path”. 

While Noboa supported keeping oil in the ground during the refendum, he now argues that Ecuador is at war and that “we are not in the same situation as two years ago”.

Activists and indigenous people told Climate Home they were concerned about the president’s remarks, adding that democracy is under threat and that their “hope is being taken away”. 

Back in August, 59% of Ecuadorians voted to stop oil drilling in block 43. Environmentalists around the world celebrated the victory as an example of how to use democratic processes to leave fossil fuels in the ground.

Since then though, the country has gone through a political and social crisis due to a rise in gang violence. The government declared a state of emergency earlier this year, following the escape of a powerful drug lord from a top security prison.

The new president Noboa suggested that the oil from the Yasuní could help fund the “war” against drug cartels. 

Taking away hope

Pedro Bermeo is a spokesperson for Yasunidos, a coalition of indigenous NGOs from the Amazon that led the call for the referendum. He said Noboa’s statement is “worrying, unwise, and undemocratic” as Noboa is saying he won’t abide by people’s votes. 

Belén Páez, president of climate and indigenous rights NGO Fundación Pachamama, said Noboa’s statement “is very dangerous in several ways because it attempts against the citizens’ decision and puts democracy at risk”. 

As someone who voted in favor to keep Yasuní’s oil underground, Bermeo said that people like him feel their “hope is being taken away”. 

Bermeo said that, when the refendum took place, Ecuador was already facing extreme violence and poverty. But nevertheless, people voted to keep the oil in the ground.

“There was a feeling of hope to protect life on the planet”, says the activist. So now Bermeo argues that voters feel defrauded and “have stopped believing in the State”. 

Belén Páez added “it makes us all feel bad and distrustful”. 

Páez, who has worked to protect indigenous rights in Ecuador, added that Noboa’s remarks could result in a set back of other environmental policies. 

Moi Guiquita of the indigenous Waorani people in the Ecuadorian Amazon pulls a boat over flooded jungle areas at the lagoon of the Yasuni National Park in the Bameno community, in the Pastaza province, in Ecuador, July 29, 2023. REUTERS/Karen Toro

Fighting back

On February 1, the indigenous Amazon Waorani Nationality declared themselves in a ‘territorial emergency’ and demanded that the government respects the referendum.

At a press conference, the indigenous group rejected Noboa’s proposal of a moratorium. They added that a moratorium would perpetuate the violation of indigenous peoples’ rights and territory, including those of the Tagaeri and Taromenane, the only two indigenous peoples in voluntary isolation in Ecuador. 

The Waorani Nationality announced that, if a moratorium is formally proposed, they will take legal action against the Ecuadorian State. Their decision to do so was supported by the Confederation of Indigenous Nationalities of the Ecuadorian Amazon.

“We are not going to allow our rights to continue being violated,” said Waoranai Nationality president Juan Bay, “it is time for us to have social and environmental justice”. 

Second referendum

Mauricio Alarcón is a rule of law and democracy campaigner at Fundación Ciudadanía y Desarrollo. He said this situation leaves voters with “an unpleasant feeling”.

Alarcón argues that Noboa’s statement is contradictory to his past stances, as he vowed to protect the Yasuní when he was a presidential candidate. 

He added that a moratorium on the referendum is technically possible, but it might not be as easy as the government is making it seem.

The results of a referendum can only be reversed through another referendum, he said, which would force the government to propose a new vote on whether to put in place a moratorium..

If what the government intends is a total reversal of what has been decided regarding the Yasuní, a referendum is also the way to go, “and it will be the citizens the ones to have the last word”, states Alarcón. 

Since his remarks in January, president Daniel Noboa hasn’t referred to the moratorium again. But government insiders say that it is still a possibility. 

The post Ecuador’s new president tries to wriggle out of oil drilling referendum appeared first on Climate Home News.

A spokesperson for the German government, the fund’s second-biggest donor, told Climate Home that support for such a project “is not possible” according to the rules of the fund, which was specifically set up to reduce forest destruction in the Amazon.

The United States is “confident” the fund will use its resources “consistent with its governing regulations”, a US State Department spokesperson told Climate Home.

Environmentalists fear the project would trigger an explosion in forest destruction by giving illegal loggers easier access to remote areas of the rainforest.

First ever Paris Agreement offsets face integrity questions

Investment in large-scale infrastructure projects is not listed among the target actions of the 2008 presidential decree that established how the fund should spend its money.

But officials in the Lula administration want to tap the green funds for the paving of the 900-kilometre long BR-319 highway, cutting through the rainforest and connecting Manaus and Porto Velho.

The lower house of the Brazilian Congress voted last December in favour of a bill that would allow for the use of conservation funds to finance public works aimed at “recovering, paving and increasing the capacity” of the road. The bill needs Senate approval before becoming law.

The German government said it “is observing the developments closely”. A spokesperson added that, if the bill was conclusively approved, the German government would affirm to the Amazon Fund’s managers that its resources cannot be used to pave the road.

‘Tremendous consequences’

Research shows every major highway project in the Amazon has set off a surge in land grabbing and illegal deforestation.

Philip Fearnside, a scientist at the National Institute for Amazonian Research in Manaus, told Climate Home “the consequences would be tremendous”.

He added that trees would not only be cleared on the roadside, but the project would create an interconnected network of major roads giving deforesters access to a much larger area.

Built in the 1970s by a military government, the BR-319 was abandoned a decade later due to a lack of maintenance.

Since disintegrated into a dirt road, much of the route is now impassable during the rainy season. Vehicles that attempt it during dry months crawl along the broken pavement.

A section of BR-319 in the Amazonas state of Brazil. Photo: Agencia CNT de Noticias

The Brazilian government has been sketching out plans to restore the highway on economic and social development grounds.

The transport minister, Renan Filho, announced last August that he was planning to pitch the Amazon Fund’s governing board a project to pave the road.

This would turn the road into the world’s “most sustainable highway” and would allow easier access for police patrols to monitor and prevent deforestation, the ministry argued.

But environmentalists argued that this is not the kind of project that the fund is meant to support. One of the fund’s creators, forest scientist Tasso Azevedo said the project “does not fit into any of the fund’s planned support lines”.

Amazon Fund revived

Created in 2008, the Amazon Fund has over $1.2 billion available for projects that prevent, monitor and combat deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon. The fund’s largest donors are Norway, Germany, the US, Switzerland and state-owned oil company Petrobras.

They have promised to inject an extra $800 million into the fund since President Lula revived the mechanism on his first day in office in 2023 after three years of inactivity.

“A la carte menu”: Saudi minister claims Cop28 fossil fuel agreement is only optional

Western donors had stopped money transfers in 2019, under the previous government of Jair Bolsonaro, after the former president unilaterally suspended the board of directors and the technical committee of the fund.

The Brazilian Development Bank (BNDES) manages the fund and decides how to allocate its resources.

Last September it told Climate Home that any requests are processed “in accordance with the strategic vision, guidelines and focuses” outlined in the 2023-25 ​​Biennium, a new set of guidelines created by the Amazon Fund’s Guiding Committee. It has not replied to further requests for comment.

Donors sceptical over plans

A spokesperson for Germany’s Ministry for cooperation and development, said the use of Amazon Fund resources “is clearly defined and restricted” by the presidential decree underpinning the fund’s creation. “Based on these rules and regulations, the use of financial resources for paving a road through the rainforest is not possible”, they added.

A US State Department spokesperson said they “are confident” the BNDES will use the fund’s resources “consistent with its governing regulations and Brazil’s public commitment to cease all deforestation in the Legal Amazon by 2030”.

Brazil cracks down on illegal gold miners

A spokesperson for the Norwegian embassy in Brazil said it is for the Brazilian government through BNDES to decide on the specific use of the resources in the Amazon Fund. “The Norwegian Government has no say in the selection of projects”, it added.

The Brazilian government controls BNDES and appoints its head. “It is not an independent institution and the government has put pressure on its decisions in the past”, says Fearnside. “It just depends on how high a priority the project is for the government. The indication is that, except for the Ministry of Environment, the rest of the government is in favour of this highway”.

Fast-tracking process

Meanwhile, a group of parliamentarians from the Amazon regions brought a new bill to Congress aiming to fast-track the construction project. The text, approved under a special ‘urgency’ procedure, calls the highway “critical infrastructure, indispensable to national security”. 

The bill would authorize the use of donations received by Brazil to help conservation of the Amazon for the repair works on BR-319.

“We want a road that gives us the right to go back and forth, to transport goods, to buy food. This is the only highway in Brazil that is not paved, we cannot treat people from the North as second-class citizens”, said Alberto Neto, the author of the bill, after its approval in the lower chamber.  

The article was updated on 11/01 to add a comment received after publication

The post Germany and US warn Brazil against using Amazon Fund to pave rainforest road appeared first on Climate Home News.

Federal Police have joined the government’s biodiversity conservation agency ICMBio on a series of recent operations to catch illegal gold miners and destroy their camps and equipment.

Gold mining is a small but growing contributor to the cutting down of the Amazon rainforest, reducing its ability to suck up greenhouse gas.

Leftist President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva’s government has already been cracking down on mining on Indigenous reservations.

But that has pushed some miners to other forests where there has been little enforcement.

Wildcat gold miners are briefly detained and questioned at an illegal gold mine (REUTERS/Adriano Machado/File Photo)

This month, armed officers of ICMBio, a government agency named after murdered environmental activist Chico Mendes, swooped down in helicopters on wildcat camps in the upper reaches of the Tapajos, a tributary of the Amazon River.

They set fire to barges used to pump and filter ore, destroyed excavators and chainsaws, and seized weapons, radios and scales used by miners to weigh their gold.

Lula has vowed to stamp out illegal mining and end deforestation by 2030. That is a sharp reversal of policy from his predecessor Jair Bolsonaro, who was criticized globally for relaxing environmental controls, giving illegal loggers and miners free range in the Amazon. He argued that Brazil had the right to develop its natural resources.

On one recent mission, a Reuters photographer followed an ICMBio team into the Urupadi National Forest where agents detained a handful of wildcat miners and destroyed their tents, excavators, dredging equipment and fuel supplies.

Brazil lawmakers approve using green fund to pave road through Amazon rainforest

The miners had cut down swathes of jungle and dug dozens of ponds to dredge for gold that they separated from sand and ore with mercury, a contaminant that poisons fish in the rivers.

Through the open door of their incoming helicopter, the ICMBio agents fired automatic weapons at motor boats carrying fleeing miners. They fired again to blow up barrels of diesel fuel and set fire to excavators so they could not be used again.

“We destroy their camps and they keep coming back,” said mission commander Sidney Serafim.

During a three-week operation, the agents found 20 mining sites and 11 clandestine airstrips in the forest, along with kilos of mercury and thousands of liters of diesel.

Ten climate questions for 2024

Detained miner Fabio Santos said he had worked prospecting for gold in Munduruku territory further along the Tapajos river, but had moved out due to law enforcement missions and conflict with the Indigenous people.

“We thought it would be quieter here. Bolsonaro did not destroy our equipment,” he said.

“Things are going downhill with the new government,” said another miner, Ramon Marques. “God left the gold here for us to enjoy it,” he added.

The men were set free into the jungle on foot. Only the manager of one of the wildcat mining sites, Manuel de Jesus Silva, was taken into police custody.

He ran a store in a wooden shack where he sold canned food and liquor to the miners for grams of gold, and had a snooker table outside for them to play.

“I used to make 200 grams a month, but in the last two months I got just 100 grams,” Silva complained.

The post Brazil cracks down on illegal gold miners appeared first on Climate Home News.

The plan, announced in late August by the country’s Minister of Transportation, Renan Filho, was met with suspicion by environmentalists who are familiar with the fund’s guidelines.

During a press conference announcing new infrastructure investments, Filho said he plans to pitch the fund’s governing board a project to pave BR319, a road that cuts through the Amazon forest and connects two major cities in the north of Brazil — Manaus and Porto Velho. 

But environmentalists argue that this is not the kind of project that the fund is supposed to support. 

“The Amazon Fund is meant to keep the forest standing, to maintain its biodiversity, and to fight climate change. I don’t see its resources being used for paving. It would be completely incompatible with its guidelines,” says Sila Mesquita, president of the NGO Amazon Working Group and current representative of civil organisations in the Amazon Fund committee. 

One of the fund’s creators, forest scientist Tasso Azevedo also disagrees with the Ministry of Transportation’s plan. 

“I don’t think it makes any sense. This project does not fit into any of the fund’s planned support lines,” says Azevedo, currently coordinator at MapBiomas, an initiative to monitor land use in Brazil developed by a network of universities, NGOs, and technology companies. 

Created in 2008, the Amazon Fund has over $1.2 billion available for projects that prevent, monitor and combat deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon. The fund gets its money mainly from its largest donors — Norway, Germany and state-owned oil company Petrobras.

Controversial comeback

In 2019, the Amazon Fund was virtually paralysed by former president Jair Bolsonaro, who dissolved the committee that sets guidelines on how the money should be spent. 

Because of this political move, the money was frozen for over three years, since new projects could not be analysed. Donor countries Norway and Germany also suspended new contributions during Bolsonaro’s term. 

Revived by president Lula on his first day in the office, new potential investors have lined up.

Last week, Denmark announced a donation of $22 million, joining the UK, USA, Switzerland, and the EU, all of which advertised new contributions since Lula reinstated the fund. 

The initiative had funded 102 projects amounting to over $360 million until it was paralysed by Bolsonaro. 

But none of the supported projects were related to road infrastructure, according to the Brazilian Development Bank (BNDES), which manages the fund. 

“So far, the BNDES has not received any requests for financing a road infrastructure project using resources from the Amazon Fund,” BNDES told Climate Home News.

New guidelines

The bank also highlighted that any requests are processed “in accordance with the strategic vision, guidelines and focuses” outlined in the 2023-25 ​​Biennium, a new set of guidelines created by the Amazon Fund’s Guiding Committee. 

The new rules for how the money should be spent in the next two years were set by a committee formed by representatives of NGOs, environmental agencies and governmental institutions such as Brazil’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Ministry of Environment. 

One of the members of this committee, Sila Mesquita, believes that the guidelines do not align with the project presented by the Ministry of Transportation.

The ministry, however, argues that the paving of BR319 would turn the road into the world’s “most sustainable highway” and would allow easier access for police patrols to monitor and prevent deforestation. 

“Our commitment, in addition to guaranteeing economic and social development by granting citizens the right to come and go, is also to ensure that the BR319 is a model in terms of environmental conservation,” the Ministry of Transportation told Climate Home News. 

Road through the rainforest

The BR319 is a federal highway that serves as the only link between two large states in the North of Brazil: Amazonas and Rondônia. 

Built during the 1970s, the road was delivered completely paved, but was closed a decade later due to lack of maintenance. Since then, only branches of the highway are paved and allow for regular traffic.

According to BR-319 Observatory, a collective of organisations that operate in the highway’s area, re-paving the road without conservation measures and proper consultation to indigenous communities can be prejudicial to the Amazon and encourage deforestation. 

The BR319 cuts through several conservation areas, including indigenous territories. Its indirect impact spans an ever larger perimeter

Several studies show that proximity to transportation networks is a major proximate driver of deforestation in the Amazon. Recent research has pointed out that 95% of the deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon happens within 5.5 km of a legal or illegal road. Considering only the official road network, most of the deforestation happens within 50 km of the nearest road. 

The complete paving of BR319, planned by the current Ministry of Transportation, still depends on several approvals from the Brazilian Institute for the Environment and Renewable Natural Resources (Ibama).

“For this road to be sustainable, like the government says, it needs to be beneficial for all those conservation parks and indigenous territories that it cuts through. We have to ask the people who live there what is sustainable for them. It’s not about being for or against the paving of a road: it’s about taking into consideration science, technology and the local communities as well,” says Sila Mesquita.

The post Brazilian government eyes money from Amazon Fund for controversial road appeared first on Climate Home News.

It is easy to see why. For the first time in 14 years, leaders from eight Amazonian nations came together in the Brazilian city of Bèlem to sketch out a plan to tackle deforestation.

The biggest success is that the meeting happened at all. It would have been an unfathomable proposition less than a year ago under the then-presidency of Jair Bolsonaro, who was overseeing a skyrocketing increase in tree-chopping in the Amazon rainforest.

When it comes to the summit’s outcome things get less rosy. The countries agreed to a long list of policies and areas of possible cooperation. But, as environmental groups put it, the Bèlem Declaration looks like “a compilation of good intentions with little in the way of measurable goals and timeframes”.

There are two notable absentees in the final document: a pledge to end deforestation by 2030 and any mention of halting fossil fuel expansion in the Amazon.

The former met the insurmountable opposition of the Bolivian government, according to Brazilian officials quoted in the FT and the Guardian. The latter, pushed by Colombia’s Gustavo Petro, always looked doomed given Brazil is still looking into plans to develop a huge offshore oil field near the mouth of the Amazon River.

The Amazon nations did, however, manage to unite around a thinly-veiled attack on new EU deforestation rules affecting imported commodities

European leaders see this as a key lever in the fight to save rainforests. But the eight countries – and many other forest nations worldwide – slam the environmental rules as “protectionist” trade barriers.

This fight will continue at the negotiations over the EU-Mercosur free trade deal.

This week’s news:

• Indonesia falls short on peatland restoration, risking destructive fire season
• Amazon nations decry EU deforestation rules in thinly-veiled joint condemnation
• Amazon nations fail to agree on deforestation goal at summit
• Metals bosses enjoy front row seat at UN deep-sea mining negotiations
• Mainstream economists accused of playing down climate threat
• Amazon nations split on oil and deforestation, ahead of summit

Climate-unfriendly economics

Mainstream economists have a dangerous habit of playing down climate change.

At least that’s according to two recent reports that reached the same conclusion: economic models ignore tipping points, floods, droughts and indoor work. Glaring omissions that end up hugely underplaying the economic damage of global warming.

This is not just an academic exercise. The models are relied upon by investors, politicians, central bank governors and influential bodies like the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

If economists get it wrong, decisions made on the basis of their work will prove costly.

The post Dis-united States of the Amazon – Climate Weekly appeared first on Climate Home News.

Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, who has staked his international reputation on improving Brazil’s environmental standing, had been pushing for the region to unite behind a common policy of ending deforestation by 2030 – one he has already adopted.

Instead, the joint declaration issued on Tuesday in the Brazilian city of Belem created an alliance for combating forest destruction, with countries left to pursue their own individual deforestation goals.

The document also leaves out any mentions to halting fossil fuel contracts in the Amazon rainforest, a proposal that was championed by the Colombian President Gustavo Petro but ultimately failed to make it into the final text.

The Brazilian coalition of climate NGOs, Climate Observatory, said the declaration fell short of expectations, adding the agreement “fails the rainforest and the planet”.

Pressure grows on governments and banks to stop supporting Amazon oil and gas

Slow action

The failure of the eight Amazon countries to agree on a pact to protect their own forests points to the larger, global difficulties at forging an agreement to combat climate change. Many scientists say policymakers are acting too slowly to head off catastrophic global warming.

Lula and other national leaders left Tuesday’s meeting without commenting on the declaration. Presidents from Bolivia, Brazil, Colombia and Peru attended the summit, while Ecuador, Guyana, Suriname and Venezuela sent other top officials.

Brazil’s Foreign Minister Mauro Vieira said in a press briefing that the issue of deforestation “in no way whatsoever will divide the region” and cited “an understanding about deforestation” in the declaration, without elaborating.

As Guyana shows, carbon offsets will not save the Amazon rainforest

This week’s summit brought together the Amazon Cooperation Treaty Organization (ACTO) for the first time in 14 years, with plans to reach a broad agreement on issues from fighting deforestation to financing sustainable development.

Márcio Astrini, executive secretary of the Brazilian NGO coalition Climate Observatory, said the summit’s declaration is a “first step” but added it still lacks “concrete responses to the situation we’re dealing with”.

“The planet is melting, we are breaking temperature records every day. It is not possible that, in a scenario like this, eight Amazonian countries cannot put in a statement, in bold letters, that deforestation needs to be zero and that exploring for oil in the middle of the forest is not a good idea,” said Astrini.

Oil in the Amazon?

Tensions emerged in the lead up to the summit around diverging positions on deforestation and oil development.

Fellow Amazon countries also rebuffed Colombia’s leftist President Gustavo Petro’s ongoing campaign to end new oil development in the Amazon. In his speech on Tuesday, Petro likened the left’s desire to keep drilling for oil to the right-wing denial of climate science.

He said the idea of making a gradual “energy transition” away from fossil fuels was a way to delay the work needed to stop climate change.

G20 climate talks fail to deliver emission cuts despite leadership pleas

Civil society organisations accused the Brazilian government of opposing a mention to fossil fuels in the final text, adding the country wanted to “bury” any mentions of a fossil fuel phase out in the region.

Brazil is weighing whether to develop a potentially huge offshore oil find near the mouth of the Amazon River and the country’s northern coast, which is dominated by rainforest.

“What we are discussing in Brazil today is of an extensive and large area – in my vision perhaps the last frontier of oil and gas before … the energy transition,” Brazil’s Energy Minister Alexandre Silveira told reporters after Petro’s speech.

Silveira said they should conduct research into what oil is there in order to make a decision on the issue.

Illegal mining

Beyond deforestation, the summit also did not fix a deadline on ending illegal gold mining, although leaders agreed to cooperate on the issue and to better combat cross-border environmental crime.

The final joint statement, called the Belem Declaration, strongly asserted indigenous rights and protections, while also agreeing to cooperate on water management, health, common negotiating positions at climate summits, and sustainable development.

As Reuters previously reported, the declaration additionally established a science body to meet annually and produce authoritative reports on science related to the Amazon rainforest, akin to the United Nations’ International Panel on Climate Change.

The post Amazon nations fail to agree on deforestation goal at summit appeared first on Climate Home News.

The meeting of the Amazon Cooperation Treaty Organization (ACTO) gathers heads of state from Bolivia, Brazil, Colombia, Ecuador, Guyana, Peru, Suriname and Venezuela for two days in the northern Brazilian city of Belem.

They will aim to forge unified policies, goals and positions in international negotiations on some 130 issues ranging from financing for sustainable development to indigenous inclusion.

But at a pre-summit meeting last month, Colombian President Gustavo Petro pushed his Brazilian counterpart Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva to block all new oil development in the Amazon. Brazil is weighing whether to develop a potentially huge offshore oil find near the mouth of the Amazon River.

Gas lock-in: Debt-laden Ghana gambles on LNG imports

“Are we going to let hydrocarbons be explored in the Amazon rainforest? To deliver them as exploration blocks? Is there wealth there or is there the death of humanity?” Petro asked in a speech alongside Lula.

Days later, Petro underscored the issue in an op-ed in the Miami Herald, writing: “As heads of state, we must assure the end of new oil and gas exploration in the Amazon.”

The debate over drilling for oil near the mouth of the Amazon has sparked fierce infighting in Lula’s seven-month-old government, pitting advocates for regional development against environmentalists.

Asked whether oil would factor into an accord at the summit, Brazilian diplomats told journalists last week that a joint statement was still being negotiated and economic development more broadly was under discussion.

UK government bets on ‘pragmatic’ climate inaction ahead of election

A Brazilian government official, who was not authorized to speak to the media, said that Colombia was in an easy position to propose no new drilling in the Amazon because it did not have significant oil reserves there, unlike Brazil or Peru.

For his part, Lula pushed at the pre-summit meeting in Leticia, Colombia, for all countries in the region to pledge an end to deforestation by 2030. Only Bolivia and Venezuela have not yet made such a commitment.

Bolivia could be a barrier to such a regional 2030 pact, the Brazilian government source said. Primary forest loss there rose 32% last year amid fires and rapid agricultural expansion, according to Global Forest Watch.

The Bolivian government did not respond to requests for comment.

Amazon governments set sights on narco-deforestation

Other differences that could surface at the summit are more subtle disagreements about priorities. Colombia hosted the pre-summit meeting where top on the agenda was cross-border collaboration to address the rising threat of drug traffickers perpetrating environmental crimes in the Amazon.

Brazil, by contrast, has emphasised opportunities for sustainable development, reflecting Lula’s campaign platform focused on poverty reduction and conservation.

The post Amazon nations split on oil and deforestation, ahead of summit appeared first on Climate Home News.

“Narco-deforestation,” as it was referred to in a United Nations report last month, represents a new target for law enforcement operating in the Amazon rainforest, where the lines between specialist criminal outfits are increasingly blurred.

The eight member countries of the Amazon Cooperation Treaty Organization (ACTO), who are due to meet in the northeastern Brazilian city of Belem for an Aug. 8-9 summit, are expected to reach an agreement to cooperate on combating such crimes, said Carlos Lazary, the organization’s executive director.

“We’re worried about the Amazon,” Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, who proposed the summit on the campaign trail, said in a speech last month. “It’s there that organized crime, drug trafficking and everything illegal is fomented.”

Deep-sea mining ban draws closer despite China’s opposition

Boosted by bumper Andean coca harvests and record-breaking cocaine demand in Europe, the Amazon has in recent years become a drug-trafficking thoroughfare. Illicit cargos easily pass through the vast, sparsely populated and thinly policed region on boats, planes or even submarines on their way to the Atlantic Ocean.

With booming profits, many of the drug gangs in the Amazon are now laundering the money through illegal land speculation, logging, mining and other means, the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime warned in its annual World Drug Report.

Charles Nascimento, a Brazilian Federal Police officer and veteran of the Amazon drugs beat, said criminal groups often use existing drug routes to get illegally harvested gold and wood to market.

“Many people who work in wildcat mines also work as traffickers and vice versa,” he said. “It’s like they feed off of each other.”

This increasing criminal cross-pollination has prompted police to expand a recurring Amazon anti-narcotics operation between Peru and Brazil, scheduled for later this year, to also target environmental crimes, Nascimento said.

Murders prompt pushback

The 2022 murders of indigenous expert Bruno Pereira and British journalist Dom Phillips, allegedly at the hands of a poaching ring with organized crime connections, prompted Lula to increase policing in remote areas, Nascimento said.

Lula – who has staked his international reputation on ending the rampant deforestation that surged under his far-right predecessor Jair Bolsonaro – has reeled off a flurry of measures to combat environmental crime since taking office on Jan. 1.

The most important has been the creation of a specialized Federal Police directorate focused on the Amazon and environmental crime.

His administration has also proposed a center for international police cooperation in the Amazon’s largest city of Manaus, which may factor into the final agreement at the summit, ACTO’s Lazary said.

Brazil seeks European trade advantages in return for Amazon protection

Neighboring countries – as well as agencies in developed countries importing illegal wood and gold – will be invited to send permanent representatives to the center to help coordinate investigations, said Valdecy Urquiza, head of the Federal Police’s international cooperation directorate.

At a meeting of international police in Belem a day before next week’s presidential summit, Brazil will also promote plans to share lab technology that can pinpoint whether wood and good is illegally sourced, Urquiza said.

Databases of gold and wood samples taken from around the Amazon – which use molecular analysis to identify the specific locations of the source – can help police determine if seized goods originated in an area where it is illegal to mine, such as in Indigenous reserves, Urquiza said.

Brazil – which will host the global COP30 climate change summit in Belem in 2025 – has begun to train police in Latin America and Europe on these methods.

As Guyana shows, carbon offsets will not save the Amazon rainforest

Past international meetings and agreements have largely failed to generate much cooperation between wary national police forces in the Amazon, said Robert Muggah, lead author of the U.N. report’s chapter on organized crime in the Amazon.

Amazon countries signed a strongly worded commitment to cooperate on environmental crimes in the 2019 Leticia Declaration. But Brazil’s Bolsonaro and former Colombia President Ivan Duque excluded leftist Venezuela, and the signatories failed to follow through with concrete actions, Muggah said. South America’s swing left under Lula and Colombia’s Gustavo Petro may help improve cooperation, he added.

“Crime is among the top, if not the top issue confronting the protection of a standing forest in the Amazon,” he said. “It should be concerning to our decision-makers.”

The post Amazon governments set sights on narco-deforestation appeared first on Climate Home News.

It sounds like a a win-win. A company gets a step closer to telling its investors and consumers it’s reached net zero, and critical forest protection gets an injection of cash.

These days, forests generate a lot of credits: they represent one in three carbon credits sold through Verra, the largest of the voluntary carbon market administrators. 

But this market is plagued with problems. It routinely inflates its climate impact, diverts money to middlemen who cream off profits, and exploits Indigenous communities. High-profile investigations have exposed widespread malpractice. 

G20 climate talks fail to deliver emission cuts despite leadership pleas

That scrutiny should not stop, because the most dangerous element of exploiting forests for carbon credits still exists: businesses buy credits as a shortcut to meet their net zero targets while continuing to pump out emissions.

Forest offsets, no matter how incredible trees’ role in tackling climate change is, are simply not equivalent to cutting emissions: storing carbon in trees isn’t always a long-term bet to keep carbon out of the atmosphere.

Deforestation, decay, or fire (as we have recently seen in Canada) can release it back into the atmosphere within hours. The only sure way to slow down climate change and meet net zero goals is to keep coal, oil and gas in the ground.   

To understand the risks of forest carbon credits being sold as offsets, take a look at Guyana: a story of zombie carbon credits, dubious accounting, and a cosy relationship between offset schemes and the oil industry. 

UN deep-sea mining talks deadlocked over agenda clash

Guyana’s story begins with a calculated overstatement of the risk of deforestation. A report written by McKinsey in 2009 claimed that the country’s forests could disappear at a rate of more than 4% per year, gone entirely within 25 years.

Independent assessments show that the true rate of deforestation was actually around 0.2%. But the inflated McKinsey estimate had already established an attention-grabbing baseline number that would set the project up to report an impressive – but false – impact.   

In a deal set up with the Norwegian government, Guyana received four payments totalling nearly $200 million for ‘avoided deforestation’. Recently, Guyana sold 33.5 million carbon credits for reducing forest loss during 2016 and 2020, this time under an ART-TREEs crediting scheme.   

But analysis of the methodology used shows that, as with previous payments to Guyana, the ‘emissions reductions’ may be largely fictitious. According to one analysis, some 84% of these credits were created by accounting manipulations allowed under the scheme.

Independent evidence also suggests deforestation actually rose during the crediting period. Data from the independent Global Forest Watch shows that forest loss in four of the five years was higher than in all the years the analysis looked at. 

Germany plans to keep funding new gas projects overseas despite pledge

Meanwhile, the Amerindian Peoples Association, which defends the rights of Guyanese Indigenous Peoples, said that there hadn’t been proper consultation about the programme with people with ancestral rights to land. 

Astonishingly, this project – which allowed deforestation to rise, and more carbon to be released into the atmosphere – was used to greenwash oil drilling off Guyana’s coast. The Hess Corporation, which has a 30% stake in a deal exploiting oil from Guyana’s recently-opened Starbroek offshore oil block, announced its intention to buy $750 million of credits generated by Guyana forest projects to offset its emissions.

But in comparison to the 33 million tonnes of carbon supposedly captured by the scheme so far, the oilfield could, over its lifetime, release up to 5.5 billion tonnes of carbon. That’s 166 times as much. 

A race to the bottom of offset standards permitted the creation of millions of ‘zombie carbon credits’ used to justify oil drilling.  

UN climate fund suspends project in Nicaragua over human rights concerns

But can we blame forest nations for looking to exploit a promising source of finance? For decades emerging economies dense in essential biodiversity have faced promises of critical finance from the global north to protect and restore rainforests – the lungs of the earth and the only tried and tested method for removing carbon from the atmosphere.

A $711 billion a year funding gap currently exists for nature protection and restoration, with $200 billion of that needing to be new sources of finance outside of repurposing existing subsidies that could be channelled in better directions.  

In the run up to Cop28 we’re seeing countries and continents rich in carbon storing biodiversity come together – through the Amazon Summit, Africa Climate Summit and Three Basins Summit all before COP28 –  to renegotiate what those financing solutions should look like.  

Now is the time to turn away from the small piece of the funding pie failing carbon markets represent and focus energy on real solutions that really have forests, people and the climate at their heart.  

On its website, ART TREES says credits created under its HFLD methodology “constitute additional climate action” and “incentivises jurisdictions to protect intact forests since guarding the carbon sequesterd in these forests is essential to meeting the goals of the Paris Agreement”

Joe Eisen is the executive director of the Rainforest Foundation UK

This story was was edited on August 21, 2023, to correct the role of the Amerindian Peoples Association as a defender of indigenous rights in Guyana, but not a legal representative of them.

The post As Guyana shows, carbon offsets will not save the Amazon rainforest appeared first on Climate Home News.

Leaders will be meeting next month at the Amazon Summit in Belém, a city also due to host the Cop30 climate talks in 2025, to discuss the 45-year-old Amazon Cooperation Treaty for the first time in several years.

The final guest list is not yet clear, but nations across Latin America are expected to be represented as well as some from Europe.

Brazilian president Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva has rebooted the summit in the hope of using it to build support for his commitment to end illegal deforestation in the Amazon by 2030, but curbing fossil fuel extraction does not appear to be on the agenda.

G20 divisions over key climate goals pile pressure on Cop28 hosts

However, a grassroots campaign led by Indigenous groups and civil society argues such a move is essential to combat climate change, and to protect biodiversity and the Indigenous people that live there.

The campaign builds on an existing effort to get a global pact for the permanent protection of four-fifths of Amazonia by 2025. Focusing specifically on oil and gas, it calls for an Amazon exclusion zone where no fossil fuels can be exploited, in line with the International Energy Agency’s (IEA) warning that there can be no new fossil fuel projects if the world is to stay under a 1.5°C warming threshold.

Domestic exploitation

A number of South American countries in which the Amazon rainforest lies have been trying to boost domestic oil and gas exploration and extraction in recent years. 

Peru is proposing to place 31 oil blocks over 435 indigenous communities, while Bolivia recently finalised an ‘Upstream Reactivation Plan’.

Meanwhile, the result of a forthcoming Ecuadorian referendum about oil exploitation in the Yasuní rainforest will be hugely significant for that part of the Amazon but will also send a wider message about the region’s priorities.

In Brazil, a far-right Congress is proposing to gut the powers of both the ministries of the environment and Indigenous peoples, throwing Lula’s deforestation pledge into doubt. 

The Brazilian president’s own ambitions of positioning himself as climate leader have also been called into question over his stance on an oil drilling project at the mouth of the Amazon river. He recently said he found it “difficult” to believe that oil exploration in the Amazon basin would damage the region’s rainforest.

EU and Argentina strike gas, hydrogen & renewables deal

Ahead of the Amazon Summit, Indigenous groups will be meeting in Brazil to share fossil fuel resistance strategies, with the support of campaign group 350.org. 

“From this we hope will come a very powerful document that will inform the discussions of the presidents in Belém,” said Ilan Zugman, 350.org’s Latin America managing director. “Hopefully it will have some very strong messages saying no new fossil fuel projects in the Amazon.”

Petro’s lead

Zugman said Colombian president Gustavo Petro had been a “very loud voice” in support of this idea. In January, Petro announced a halt in all new oil and gas exploration contracts, keeping 380 currently active contracts. 

In a recent opinion piece for the Miami Herald, Petro called on Amazon countries and their partners in the Global North to follow him on ending all new oil and gas exploration in the Amazon.

He said that, while ending deforestation was “fundamental”, it had to be accompanied by “an ambitious transnational policy to phase out fossil fuels”. Oil, gas and coal accounts for about half of all Colombian exports.

Dozens of oil & industry lobbyists attended secretive shipping emissions talks

Petro said some countries, like Colombia, could allocate a “substantial amount of resources” to protect the Amazon. 

But he stressed that curbing oil and gas exploitation would have a big economic impact on poorer South American nations and called on countries like the US to help with financial mechanisms such as debt-for-climate swaps, a multilateral fund that funds environmental protection services by inhabitants of these territories, or the kind of financial reforms being progressed by the Bridgetown initiative. 

At a recent meeting, the Colombian and Brazilian presidents pledged to cooperate to protect the Amazon but the latter did not appear to make any concessions on oil and gas.

“We need to convince other presidents like Lula.. to step up as well and really play this leadership role,” said Zugman, “to not allow fossil fuel exploration in one of the most important places of the world.” 

Banking spotlight

Campaigners are also stepping up pressure on financial institutions to stop financing oil and gas projects in the region.

A report, published today by NGO Stand.earth and the Coordinator of Indigenous Organizations of the Amazon Basin (COICA), shows that US$20 billion has been provided to explore and exploit reserves in Peru, Colombia, Brazil and Ecuador over the past 15 years.

More than half of this (US$11 billion) came from just eight banks: JPMorgan Chase, Citibank, Itaú Unibanco, HSBC, Santander, Bank of America, Banco Bradesco and Goldman Sachs.

Six of these banks are either headquartered in the US or act through their US subsidiary and operate in deals across the region, while the two Brazilian companies – Itaú Unibanco and Banco Bradesco – are highly connected to specific oil and gas projects in that country. 

The report is accompanied by a database of all the banks involved in Amazon oil and gas through directly traceable and indirect financing, for example by providing loans or underwriting bond deals for upstream and midstream development and transport of oil and gas in Amazonia. 

The EU-Mercosur trade deal will harm Brazil’s indigenous communities

JPMorgan Chase tops the list, having directly provided US$1.9 billion in direct financing to oil and gas in the region over the past decade and a half.

Together with HSBC, it was a major backer of Petroperú’s Talara refinery expansion project, which is driving the exploitation of oil on Indigenous land in the Peruvian Amazon.

JPMorgan Chase has ruled out support for the highly controversial East African Crude Oil Pipeline project, but made no such commitment on oil and gas activity in the Amazon or wider fossil fuel expansion. 

The Stand.earth report says an Amazon exclusion for financial institutions is an “essential strategy” to protect the region from oil, gas, and other extractive industries.

Although no banks have completely ruled out funding fossil fuels in Amazonia – the geographic region around the Amazon basin – the report does praise some companies for starting to recognise the risks involved. 

Exclusion policies

 In May 2022, BNP Paribas pledged to no longer finance or invest in companies producing from oil and gas reserves in the Amazon or developing related infrastructure, becoming the first major bank to adopt a geographical exclusion of oil and gas in this area.

And in December 2022, HSBC amended its policies to exclude all new finance and advisory services for any client for oil and gas project exploration, appraisal, development, and production in the Amazon Biome.

The EU-Mercosur trade deal will harm Brazil’s indigenous communities

Stand.earth says these two companies, along with some others, are “sending important signals” that banks should be willing to review their relationship to Amazon destruction and take steps to manage that risk.

These also go some way towards the Exit Amazon Oil and Gas principles devised by international advocacy groups including Stand.earth and Amazon Indigenous leaders.

Clear boundaries

Angeline Robertson, lead researcher of Stand Research Group, said efforts to restrict fossil fuels should cover the wider Amazonia area “to avoid confusion or allow banks to define the exclusion zone themselves.

This was an issue with Arctic exclusions, where banks used different boundaries in their policies.”  Standard Chartered’s and BNP Paribas’ exclusions, for example, cover the ‘Amazon’ or ‘Amazon Basin’, while Société Générale and Intesa Sanpaolo’s policies include only the Amazon regions of Ecuador and Peru.

Zugman said both governments and financial institutions had a big role to play in protecting the region. “Governments need to step up first. And banks… should be there by their side to support these bold decisions and to help accelerate the just energy transition.”

He added that banks could play an important role in the Amazon by supporting a just energy transition. “Energy access is still a big deal in the Amazon and banks could, in consultation with communities, be helping them have clean access to energy instead of investing in businesses that are going to destroy their lands.”

Zugman said the Belém summit was vital because it would inform about protection of the Amazon at Cop28 in December as well as the next G20 meeting which Brazil is due to host. “We’re really pushing together for this moment.” 

The post Pressure grows on governments and banks to stop supporting Amazon oil and gas  appeared first on Climate Home News.

It is the first time that Ecuadorians will vote on an ecological issue of this magnitude. Experts consulted by Climate Home News said the referendum will define the economic model for the country’s future.

The environmental referendum is a first of its kind for Ecuador and, if approved by a simple majority of Ecuadorians, would ban all new oil wells in the Yasuní park, as well as phasing out existing concessions.

Norway approves oil and gas fields despite Cop fossil phase-out push

Pedro Bermeo, spokesperson for Yasunidos, a coalition of NGOs that led the call for the vote, said the public debate around climate change is already a victory. He added the referendum is a “milestone in the history of Ecuador”.

“Beyond the result, we must see this as an opportunity to value what this referendum has already provoked: a national debate that has never existed before,” Bermeo said.

The vote is scheduled to take place on August 20. At the time of publication, there have been no public opinion polls.

Vote for the rainforest

The Yasuní National Park, Ecuador’s largest, hosts one of the largest biodiversity hotspots on Earth, and is the home of the Tagaeri and Taromenane people in voluntary isolation. 

For decades, Yasuní has been threatened by extractive industries, such as mining and oil. For over six years, Ecuador’s State oil company, Petroecuador, has been operating in this territory. 

According to reports from the Andean Amazon Monitoring Project, at least 689 hectares have been deforested in the Yasuní, most of it, by the oil industry.

This is the size of 1,200 American Football fields and exceeds the 300-hectare limit established after a previous referendum in 2018.

Ecuador, Amazon Rainforest, Rio Napo, Near Coca, in the Yasuni National Park, on November, 14 2022. (Photo: Reuters / Stevens Tomas / ABACA)

Data provided by the Ministry of Environment, shows there have been more than 1,500 oil spills in the Ecuadorian Amazon in the last decade, which means at least 12 occur every month. 

Experts warn that both deforestation and oil spills threaten the unique biodiversity of the Amazon.

Activists have called for a vote on whether to keep drilling for oil in this region but, in 2013, the country declared Yasuní as an area of national interest and began extracting crude soon after. 

Bermeo’s Yasunidos proposed a referendum to nullify the declaration, but the process was blocked by an electoral court.

Threat of EU carbon tax prompts dubious “green aluminium” claims in Mozambique

Climate debate

The current government says approving the referendum can have “catastrophic” effects on the economy. Still, they’ve claimed they won’t campaign against it.

Fernando Santos, Energy Minister, has said in several interviews that the country “won’t gain anything by not producing [the Yasuní] ITT oil”. He has also argued that removing existing infrastructure will actually have negative costs for the country.

But experts claim the benefits from oil in Ecuador’s Amazon could be short-lived. 

During a hearing at the Constitutional Court, Petroecuador’s technicians explained the oil from Yasuní is low-quality “extra-heavy crude”, which requires high investments to process and sell.

When drilling began in Yasuní, Petroecuador expected to reach a daily production of 200,000 oil barrels by 2022. However, official data shows it has remained at 55,000 — about a quarter of what was expected. Pedro Bermeo says that the “figures they [the government] are giving are false”. 

As a result, a 2019 study by the Geological and Energetic Research Institute, a public research institution in Ecuador, estimated that by 2029, “oil could no longer be the main source of income” in the country. The study called for a change in the economic model.

Latin America leads resistance to global shipping emission tax

An important precedent

Luis Suárez, Executive Director at Conservation International Ecuador, said the referendum is an opportunity to rethink the country’s future, and suggested a move to tourism and bioeconomy. “What is the country going to bet on?”, he asked.

Domingo Peas, Territory Coordinator for the Cuencas Sagradas Initiative and a longtime leader of the Achuar nationality, says the vote will be “historic for Ecuador and the world” because “it will frame strategies for the next generation”. 

For the indigenous nationalities living in the Amazon, including the Tagaeri and Taromenane, the referendum is a way of respecting their human rights, he added.

“We, indigenous people, have said that we only want a dignified life”, and the approval of the referendum will grant that, Peas said.

Still, all experts consulted said the referendum will not stop oil production overnight. “We know these changes take time”, said Peas, “but it is imperative that they occur eventually”.

The post ‘Historic milestone’: Ecuador nears vote to keep Amazon oil in the ground appeared first on Climate Home News.

Brazil’s environmental regulator Ibama, late on Wednesday, said it would block a request by state-run oil giant Petrobras to drill at the mouth of the Amazon river near Amapá, in a much-awaited decision that followed a technical recommendation by Ibama experts to reject the project.

In a filing, Petrobras said it planned to file an appeal for Ibama to reconsider its ruling, saying it “strictly complied with all the requirements of the licensing process.”

The decision by Ibama, which is overseen by Lula’s environment minister, the globally recognized environmentalist Marina Silva, has riled some within the governing coalition.

UAE appoints fossil fuels execs and climate campaigners as Cop28 advisers

Lula, who hails from the poor northeast, has staked his international reputation on reversing environmental back-sliding under his far-right predecessor former President Jair Bolsonaro. But he is also under pressure to deliver much-needed growth to poor, under-developed regions in the north and northeast, and wants state-owned Petrobras to be an engine of that growth.

Lula ally resigns

Senator Randolfe Rodrigues, who represents the state of Amapa, said Ibama had taken a decision with major economic impact for the state without taking into account the views of the people of Amapa or its state government. Rodrigues is a senior Lula ally who ran his presidential campaign last year.

“We’ll fight against this decision,” Rodrigues wrote on Twitter, adding that “the people of Amapa want to have the right to be heard”. He later announced he was departing his party, the center-left Sustainability Network, in light of the decision.

A decisão do Ibama contrária à pesquisas na costa do Amapá não ouviu o governo local e nenhum cidadão do meu estado. O povo amapaense quer ter o direito de ser escutado sobre a possível existência e eventual destino de nossas riquezas (…)

— Randolfe Rodrigues (@randolfeap) May 18, 2023

The Sustainability Network was founded in the early 2010s by Silva, the environment minister, who appointed Ibama head Rodrigo Agostinho.

Agostinho told GloboNews TV on Thursday that Petrobras would be allowed to file a new request to drill in the region, but noted that studies presented by the firm to date were not enough for the move to be cleared.

Petrobras said in its filing that it was not giving up hope on its plans to develop an oil-rich region with potential reserves of up to 14 billion barrels of oil.

“The company remains committed to the development of the Brazilian Equatorial Margin,” it said, adding it would “ensure the country’s energy security.”

Final decision

Despite Petrobras’ stated intentions, the ruling effectively ends all future development of the unexplored oil prospects at the mouth of the Amazon river, former Ibama boss Suely Araujo told Reuters.

Araujo said that even if Petrobras undertakes the deeper studies requested by Ibama, the final say would still rest with the regulator. “The decision is final,” she said, adding she expected Lula to support Ibama’s ruling.

Regulators crack down on corporate carbon neutrality claims

Exploration rights in the area were auctioned in 2013, but oil majors BP and TotalEnergies pulled out due to the cost of the off-shore studies and difficulties in obtaining licenses for drilling, while Petrobras kept going.

Neither Lula’s office, nor the environment ministry responded to requests for comment.

Environmental groups celebrated Ibama’s decision.

In a statement, Greenpeace said Ibama had emphasized the need for “a fair energy transition, instead of insisting on yet another oil exploration frontier in the context of the climate crisis.”

Ibama has “postponed the end of the world,” environmental group Observatorio do Clima proclaimed.

The post Regulator blocks Brazilian oil drilling, sparking conflict within government appeared first on Climate Home News.

In a joint statement, the countries said they “intend to engage collaboratively in support of eliminating global illegal logging and deforestation through effectively enforcing their respective laws on banning illegal imports and exports”.

Brazilian President Lula da Silva met with his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping during a visit to China, in a bid to strengthen ties. China is Brazil’s largest trading partner and a major importer of commodities such as soy and crude petroleum.

Both countries added they will cooperate with satellite information, “which will enable enhanced monitoring”. China and Brazil share the CBERS satellite program, which made its first launch back in 2001.

Brazil bids to bring Cop30 climate talks to Amazon’s Belem

Cyntia Feitosa, international relations advisor at the Brazilian think tank Instituto Clima e Sociedade, said the joint statement was “a very good signal”, but warned there’s still questions about how it would be put into practice.

“It would be very good to see some joint traceability strategy, for example, to avoid the export of any product that has deforestation in its supply chain,” Feitosa said.

A 2019 report by the Brazilian NGO Amazon Watch showed that companies charged with environmental crimes in the Amazon were still able to export their products to the international market, in particular to Brazil’s three main trading partners — China, the EU and the US.

Climate leadership

With the arrival of Lula da Silva to Brazil’s presidency, the country resumed its efforts to influence global climate action. Da Silva also retook a closer relation with China, which at times was tense under the last government of Jair Bolsonaro.

Both countries now agreed to establish a Subcommittee on Environment and Climate Change and support Brazil’s bid for Cop30. Back in January, Da Silva expressed his desire to host the UN climate talks in Belem, the second-biggest city in the Amazon region.

Lula revives $1 billion Amazon Fund and environmental protections

“China welcomes the Brazilian candidacy to host COP30, as the 2025 summit will be key to the very future of the global response to climate change,” the statement said.

Feitosa welcomed the countries’ collaboration with climate action at the center. “I hope this is reflected in a collaborative posture in the negotiations and the search for effective solutions at a crucial moment for the next steps in the implementation of the Paris Agreement,” she said.

Li Shuo, policy advisor for Greenpeace East Asia, said Brazil and China hold a big sway among develpoping countries, putting them in a unique position to lead initiatives coming from the Global South.

“A Brazil that is back to international scene and a China that seeks to enhance developing country solidarity should not just imply a fortress position, but rather a stance that champions global south concerns while at the same time advances their own action,” Shuo said.

“What we need is a more forward looking position from them that says developed countries need to act and so do we. Let’s hope the joint statement is a starting point to get us there,” he added.

This story was updated to include comments from Li Shuo.

The post China and Brazil to cooperate in stopping illegal trade fueling deforestation appeared first on Climate Home News.

Police are setting up new Amazon rainforest bases and are seeking international cooperation on law enforcement in the region, including the development of radio-isotope technology to prove the illegal origin of seized gold, Humberto Freire told Reuters.

Freire is the director of the newly-created environment and Amazon department of the federal police, marking what he called a new era in the battle against environmental crime and in defense of indigenous people in the rainforest.

Adding to the urgency in the early months of President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva’s term, the government in January declared a humanitarian crisis in Yanomami territory.

Nations fight to be called climate vulnerable in IPCC report

The territory had been invaded by thousands of gold miners threatening communities with firearms, driving deforestation, spreading malaria, polluting rivers and scaring off wild game, which led to malnutrition and hundreds of deaths.

“We still have some pockets of miners who are holding out by hiding in some areas, so we going through the Yanomami territory with a fine comb,” Freire said in an interview.

Enforcement operations supported by satellite imagery and aerial photography have destroyed 250 miner camps – many of which were already deserted – and 70 dredging rafts, along with speed boats and planes, he said. Police have seized some 4,500 liters of fuel and 1.2 kilos of gold, he added.

Police encountered and then released at least 805 miners and 94 boats on rivers, but most fled before the eviction operation.

Nations seek compromise on fossil fuel phase-out ahead of Cop28

The police did not focus on arresting miners, Freire said, instead seizing or blocking 68 million reais ($13 million) of resources belonging to those accused of financing the illegal miners, while dismantling a prostitution network that took underage girls to the mining camps.

Junior Hekurari, head of the local indigenous health council, estimated that 85% of the gold miners had left or been forced out of the reservation the size of Portugal, which extends along Brazil’s northern border with Venezuela.

UN tells governments to ‘fast forward’ net zero targets

Two months after the state of emergency was declared by the government, Hekurari told Reuters that the government response is still short of staffing and helicopters to confront the scale of the health emergency among the Yanomami.

The Brazilian government is also studying new laws to stamp out illegal gold mining, which accounts for roughly half of Brazilian gold the country exports to nations, including Switzerland and Britain.

One proposal aimed at cracking down on laundered gold would require electronic tax receipts for the buying and selling of the precious metal.

Loss and damage committee ready to start talks following Asian nominations

Police have also embraced a technology using radio isotopes to identify where gold is mined, even after it has been melted into bars, Freire said. His staff hope to have the main gold producing areas of Brazil mapped out by the end of this year.

Freire said Brazil is also preparing an international police base for the Amazon with neighboring countries.

They also plan to inaugurate on Thursday a floating police station in Atalaia do Norte, on the river where British journalist Dom Phillips and Brazilian indigenous expert Bruno Pereira where murdered last year by fishermen.

The post Brazil evicts gold miners from Amazon rainforest appeared first on Climate Home News.

As part of the package, Brazil’s new leader reinstated the Amazon Fund, a $1.2 billion fund to protect of the world’s largest rainforest, after a three-year period of inactivity.  

Donors Germany and Norway suspended transfers to the fund in 2019, under the previous government of Jair Bolsonaro, after the former president unilaterally suspended the board of directors and the technical committee of the fund.

On Monday, Lula reinstated the fund’s governing body, which Norwegian environment minister Espen Barth Eide said “allows for an immediate reactivation of the fund”.  The UK’s environment minister Therese Coffey said the UK was “seriously looking at” joining the fund.

Destruction of Brazil’s Cerrado savanna soars for third year in a row

The fund, which was established during Lula’s second term in 2008, supports 102 conservation projects in the Amazon, among them forests managed by indigenous people and small-scale farms. 

Among the first executive mandates, Brazil’s new president also moved the Rural Environmental Registry —which tracks all rural land-ownership— from the agriculture to the environment ministry, extinguished the possibility of conciliating environmental fines and reactivated a plan to prevent and control deforestation in the Amazon. 

“There is still a long way to go, but what we’ve seen at the beginning of this mandate is a right start and demonstrates the importance that the issue has gained on Lula’s agenda,” said Marcio Astrini, executive secretary of the Brazilian NGO Climate Observatory. 

Green promises 

Lula was sworn into office for a third term on Sunday, after defeating rightwing incumbent Bolsonaro by a thin margin in October’s general election. Bolsonaro’s policies led to a 60% increase in deforestation in the Amazon.

Brazil’s new president promised to achieve zero deforestation in the Amazon and 100% renewable electricity during his inaugural speech, adding “Brazil does not need to cut down forests to keep and expand its strategic agricultural frontier”.

“The world expects Brazil to once again become a leader in tackling the climate crisis and an example of a socially and environmentally responsible country, capable of promoting economic growth with income distribution,” he said.

Lula will update Brazil’s ‘insufficient’ climate plans if elected: advisor

Lula appointed former environment minister and activist Marina Silva to once again lead the country’s green efforts. He also created the Ministry of Indigenous Peoples, to be led by the influential Amazonian leader Sônia Guajajara.

The new government’s environment team is promising, said Astrini, but he also warned that Lula will have to negotiate without a majority in Congress, which is dominated by legislators linked to Bolsonaro’s party and to the “ruralist” movement defending agribusiness in the Amazon.

A package of three Bolsonaro-era bills being discussed in Congress could trump Lula’s efforts to control deforestation in the Amazon. These projects would respectively allow for the relaxed use of pesticides, land-grabbing in public forests and weaker regulations for environmental permits.

“Our current Congress is extremely hostile to indigenous and environmental affairs. We have grown used to that. We need a government that defends the environment and that can face that Congress,” said Astrini.

This article was updated on 4 January to add that the UK is considering joining the fund

The post Lula revives $1 billion Amazon Fund and environmental protections appeared first on Climate Home News.

Behind security barriers, hundreds packed the Blue Zone pavilion where he was giving his first speech at the summit. One indigenous woman Facetimed a relative in Brazil: “Can you see him? Can you believe he’s right there?” she shouted over the phone.

At the Cop27 climate summit, expectations are high for Brazil’s newly elected leader. Lula won last month’s election promising a dramatic shift in rainforest protection. The outgoing government of Jair Bolsonaro leaves the country’s deforestation rate on a 12-year high.

“Brazil is leaving the cocoon where it was for the past four years,” he said in his first public appearance in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt, on Wednesday. He started the previous evening, meeting with climate envoys from China and the US. 

Lula even announced a bid to bring Cop30 to the Amazon, in the state of Amazonas or Pará. It is the turn of a Latin American country to host in 2026. “People who defend the climate should know closely what is that region,” he said. 

Lula will update Brazil’s ‘insufficient’ climate plans if elected: advisor

How much he can live up to the task is yet to be seen. He has no majority in Congress and inflation is driving the country to the brink of recession. He admitted high expectations “scare” him in an interview with The New Yorker.

Still, the fate of the Amazon rainforest depends in great part on Lula. The world’s biggest rainforest basin is at a tipping point.

Recent studies found that, over the last decade, the Amazon started to emit more carbon than it absorbs through photosynthesis. This is mainly as a result of rainforest clearance for cattle ranches and soy plantations.

Politically motivated charges

In a previous term as president 2003-10, Lula cracked down on deforestation. Since then, the leftist politician has spent time in prison before dramatically resurrecting his reputation.

Four years ago, Lula was jailed in federal police headquarters in the state of Curitiba, charged with corruption and money laundering. The Supreme Court revoked his sentence, judging it biased by political opponents. Now, he’s back at UN climate talks having won a tight election against Bolsonaro.

“We have certainty that [Lula] will protect the indigenous territories, and that he will have a ministry for indigenous people. That is a relief for us,” said Thiago Yawanawá, an indigenous activist from the Amazonian state of Acre, while waiting for Lula’s speech. 

Latin America closes ranks at Cop27 around climate finance

Other biomes could also benefit from a Lula presidency, said Shirley Krenak, an indigenous leader from the state of Minas Gerais. “We are very hopeful with the new president. It was with Lula that we had more opportunities for dialogue,” she added. 

Lula’s approach goes further. Marina Silva, a lawmaker tipped for the environment ministry, said the government does not want “an isolated protection only in Brazil. We want protection in all mega-forested countries.” 

Two days earlier, at a G20 leaders summit, Brazil signed a pact with Indonesia and the Democratic Republic of the Congo to tackle deforestation.

DRC vice-minister Eve Bazaiba hinted on Twitter this should inspire rich countries to deliver finance “proportional to the ecosystem services given to mankind”.

Contributors to the Amazon Fund froze payments during Bolsonaro’s term – but were quick to congratulate Lula on his win.

Challenge ahead 

Bolsonaro’s policies left a destructive trail in the Amazon. His administration defunded environmental protection agencies and rolled back indigenous rights and environmental protections.

A legislative package that would allow farmers to claim rainforest land is ready to vote in the Senate and could pass before Bolsonaro’s term ends.

Brazil can only protect the Amazon with consistent policies over time, the head of the Global Environmental Facility Carlos Manuel Rodríguez told Climate Home.

Silva, on her part, said she’s aware of the challenge ahead. On one hand, inflation is driving the country towards a difficult economic situation. On the other, the Brazilian Institute of Environment and Renewable Resources saw a recent 24% slash in its budget. 

In the past, under Lula, Brazil was able to drastically reduce forest loss with its own resources, said Tasso Azevedo, former chief of the Brazilian Forest Service. The new government now has the experience to do it again, he said.

“A lot of things can be done with the right political decisions. Once they start to have results, it’s kind of easy to push for funds.”

The post Lula charms UN climate summit, bringing hope for rainforests appeared first on Climate Home News.

The vote has raised environmentalists’ hopes that the Amazon rainforest will be protected from ranchers, illegal loggers and gold miners.

While Bolsonaro gutted environmental protection agencies and oversaw a rise in deforestation, Lula’s previous tenure as president saw a steady decline in forest clearance.

Deforestation speeds up climate change as the trees and soil, particularly in untouched rainforest, suck in carbon dioxide.

“For climate, [Lula’s election] is a huge hope,” Lula’s environmental advisor and former environment minister Izabella Teixeira told Climate Home News. She said that climate action and “a new relationship between humankind and nature” are critical to Brazil’s economic development.

“We know that we need to work hard but [we] now have a president that believes and is committed not only to tackle deforestation but to move forward to make sure that [we] can promote inclusive development,” she added.

In his victory speech, Lula pledged to reduce the level of forest destruction in the Brazilian Amazon to zero. According to another former environment minister Marina Silva, Lula’s administration will turn areas of the Amazon the size of France into indigenous or nature reserves. This would introduce harsher penalties for illegal deforestation in these areas.

But Amazon campaigners warned that right-wing control of Congress and the “inertia” of rising deforestation would make this target hard to achieve.

Claudio Angelo, a spokesperson for NGO Climate Observatory, told Climate Home that right-wing forces in Congress were likely to continue to support Bolsonaro until Lula takes office on 1 January. That means lawmakers will try to pass 14 bills to further weaken environmental regulations and indigenous rights before Lula takes over.

That would “make it very, very hard for Lula to rein in deforestation, pollution and stop the massacre of indigenous peoples,” Angelo warned.

“We call those bills the ‘destruction package’ and they include permanent amnesty to land-grabbing, mining in indigenous lands and the end of environmental impact assessments,” he said.

Cop27 movers and shakers: Nine people shaping the climate agenda

More than 90% of deforestation in Brazil’s Amazon is illegal. Government agencies like Ibama are tasked with stopping it. But Bolsonaro appointed people to head the agency who refused to spend most of its budget and restricted what its employees could do.

Over the last four years, Ibama had a large budget. But Bolsonaro-appointed officials just weren’t willing to spend it on inspections and enforcement, Angelo said.

Lula’s appointees are likely to spend it in full. And Congress members associated with the centre-right Centrão coalition, which votes with whoever is in power, could even support a request to increase Ibama’s budget, Angelo said.

Environmental protection could also be funded from abroad. Until Bolsonaro came to power, Norway and Germany funded Amazon protection through the Amazon Fund. Teixeira told Climate Home the fund “will be crucial to [finance] environmental enforcement”.

In 2019, Bolsonaro abolished the fund’s technical committee and in response Norway stopped its donations. The fund has not launched a new project since Bolsonaro became president.

Following Lula’s victory, Norway’s environment minister tweeted: “Norway looks forward to revitalising our extensive climate and forest partnership with Brazil.” The leaders of Canada, Germany and Australia also mentioned climate or environmental cooperation in their congratulatory tweets.

President-elect @Lulaoficial championed the protection of the Amazon and its people throughout his campaign as well as in his acceptance speech. Norway looks forward to revitalizing our extensive climate and forest partnership with Brazil. @climateforest

— Espen Barth Eide (@EspenBarthEide) October 31, 2022

André Guimarães, director of the Amazon Environmental Research Institute (Ipam), told Climate Home that “inertia” was another challenge. “That land-grabbing that took place over the last two or three years will be generating deforestation… in the next few years,” he said.

Internationally, Lula’s administration plans to work with its Amazon neighbours by organising a summit on forest protection in early 2023. And it intends to work with the Democratic Republic of Congo and Indonesia in an alliance of rainforest nations at Cop27 next week. 

Lula’s government will update the “insufficient” 2030 climate plan that Bolsonaro put together, Teixeira previously told Climate Home. On Monday, she said: “It takes time to review and develop new deals and visions.”

Lula plans to encourage state oil company Petrobras to diversify into renewables, fertilisers and biofuels. But, he said, Petrobras should expand oil production in the short term.

Bolsonaro, who has yet to accept defeat, has for months attempted to undermine the legitimacy of Brazil’s electoral system. His loss was much narrower than polls had initially forecast and there are concerns he could challenge the results.

The post Brazil election: Lula victory raises hope for Amazon rainforest appeared first on Climate Home News.

Former leftist president, Luiz Inácio “Lula” da Silva, leads the polls against the current president Jair Bolsonaro, who is seeking reelection. More than 156 million people are registered to vote on 2 October for the first electoral round.

Despite Bolsonaro’s destructive policies towards the Amazon rainforest, both he and Lula have incorporated proposals to halt deforestation, in an effort to attract concerned voters.

More than in previous years, the climate crisis has become a significant voter priority for this election, analysts told Climate Home News.

The South American country of 212 million people is the world’s sixth largest greenhouse gas emitter and home to most of the Amazon rainforest, which has experienced rising deforestation and extreme wildfires in the last four years.

Colombia’s new president calls for debt swap to protect the Amazon

In the case of all major candidates, avoiding climate action in their plans would be a “political suicide”, given the global and national context, said Thales Castro, head of the Political Science Program at the Catholic University of Pernambuco (Unicap).

Bolsonaro’s government plan proposes the use of green bonds and carbon credits to finance emissions reductions, as well as hiring 6,000 firefighters to control extreme wildfires.

The document says he’ll seek to accelerate “actions to reduce” emissions, and adds that Brazil can be a “provider of climate solutions and establishing itself as a world leader in a global green supply chain”.

But Bolsonaro’s deforestation record and his support for large agribusiness show that these proposals cannot be taken seriously, said Marcio Astrini, executive secretary of the climate NGO coalition Observatório do Clima.

Under his term, deforestation in the Amazon rose to a 12-year high. After this data was revealed by Brazil’s National Institute for Space Research, he denied it and sacked the head of the space agency.

Lula has a more positive conservation record as president 2003-2011, but if elected will face the challenge of undoing some of Bolsonaro’s legislation, said Cynthia Suassuna, climate policy researcher at Unicap. For example, a “land-grab” bill that legitimises squatters who raze Amazon rainforest for cattle ranches or soy plantations, which has passed the lower house of parliament and is on the government priority list for a Senate vote before the election.

The former president’s platform includes strengthening environmental institutions weakened by Bolsonaro’s presidency, providing “green” farm loans and meeting Brazil’s Paris Agreement goals.

On fossil fuels, Lula – like Bolsonaro – supports increasing production. His plan calls for development of the “pre-salt”, an abundant reserve of high quality petroleum found near Brazil’s shores.

“It’s necessary to expand the production capacity of (petroleum) derivatives in Brazil, taking advantage of the great wealth of the pre-salt, with prices that take into account the production costs in Brazil,” Lula’s plan reads.

Thanks to its abundant hydropower capacity, Brazil has a relatively clean electricity, with fossil fuels representing only 12% of the generation mix. However, Brazil is a major oil exporter and Latin America’s top producer.

The post Brazil election: Lula challenges Bolsonaro’s deforestation record, backs oil development appeared first on Climate Home News.

The world congress of the International Union for the Conservation of Nature overwhelmingly voted for a global pact to protect the world’s largest tropical forest — putting conservationists on a collision course with Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro.

The proposal was submitted by the Coordinator of Indigenous Organisations of the Amazon Basin (Coica), whose members erupted in joy when the vote results were announced. The motion was formally supported by 17 civil society groups from across the world.

José Gregorio Díaz Mirabal, general director of Coica, described the proposal as “a plan for the salvation of indigenous peoples and the planet”.

“We have achieved a first step. For the first time in the history of the IUCN, a motion by indigenous peoples has been approved; a proposal that was not born in Europe but in our territories,” he told Climate Home News. 

Coica members erupt in joy as IUCN approves their motion (Photo: Coica)

In total, 61 countries members of IUCN backed the motion, which is not legally binding, and 42 abstained. None voted against.

Brazil, which is not an IUCN member, could not participate in the vote. But Brazilian experts say president Jair Bolsonaro is highly unlikely to take notice of the verdict, which clashes with his agenda to open up the Amazon to business interests.

Displaced Afghan negotiator calls for climate aid to war-torn states

The motion urges governments to promote efforts to restore at least half of the Amazon’s degraded forests by 2025 and to work with indigenous peoples’ to fully recognise and delimit all their ancestral land and territories.

Coica said Amazon countries must enable indigenous peoples and local communities to govern protected areas that overlap with their territories. They further called on states to ban industrial activities in primary forests and mobilise more funding to restore ecosystems.

But in Brazil, the opposite is taking place. The Bolsonaro administration is pushing through a series of laws to roll back indigenous rights, environmental licensing standards, and land grabbing legislation, all of which prevent forest clearance, campaigners say.

Deforestation in the Amazon rose 17% in 2020 compared with the previous year. The world’s largest rainforest is now emitting more carbon than it absorbs. Humid primary forest loss in the Brazilian Amazon increased 15% during that time.

The UN backed Science Panel for the Amazon, which is composed of 200 scientists, found that 17% of the Amazon basin’s forests have been felled. It warned that if combined deforestation and degradation surged to 20-25%, the forest could reach a tipping point. Rainfall would dry up and large swaths of the forests could turn into savannah, resulting in massive carbon emissions.

Want climate news in your inbox? Sign up for free to get our weekly newsletter and occasional extra bulletins

Paulo Moutinho, senior researcher at the Amazon Environmental Research Institute (Ipam), told Climate Home he didn’t expect any reaction from Bolsonaro’s administration.

Global efforts and initiative to protect the Amazon have usually been met with claims about foreign interference and breach of sovereignty, Moutinho said.

However, outside of Brazil, the vote “certainly could reinforce the view that to protect the Amazon forest, we urgently need to protect indigenous rights to their lands,” he said.

Izabella Teixeira, Brazil’s former environment minister and co-chair of the International Resource Panel, told Climate Home the motion could be used by civil society groups in Brazil to call for environmental protection ahead of next year’s presidential election – an issue she said will be “critical”.

Mirabal, of Coica, said he hoped the motion could be translated into an action plan and implemented. He said Coica would take it to governments in South America and beyond to Europe, the US and China to drum up support.

“We want this motion to generate projects and political support for our territories, but also conserve and protect our home,” he said. “Trust us, we are going to do everything possible. But we need financial and technical support, the political will of governments, and of all the allies who today voted for us,” he said.

The post Conservationists back indigenous peoples’ call to protect 80% of the Amazon by 2025 appeared first on Climate Home News.

Environmentalists celebrated Salles’ exit but asked why it had taken president Jair Bolsonaro so long to give him the push. His replacement, Joaquim Leite, is an ally and Bolsonaro remains in favour of opening up the Amazon rainforest to business.

Salles has been environment minister since Bolsonaro came to power in January 2019. In that time, the rate of deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon increased.

Claudio Angelo, from the Climate Observatory NGO, said: “Salles was certainly a nasty symptom, but his removal leaves the disease untouched: Jair Bolsonaro is the key formulator of Brazil’s policy of environmental dismantling, and that shall remain essentially the same until the last day of his government”.

In April 2021, the top Federal police officer in the Amazonas region of Brazil accused Salles of having formed “a partnership” with the timber sector “in an attempt to obstruct the investigation of environmental crimes”.

The next month, the Brazilian Supreme Court ordered police to investigate Salles. They searched Salles’ bank and tax records and discovered “suspicious transactions” including an “extremely atypical movement” of R14m ($2.6m) involving Salles’ law firm, according to national media reports.

Salles refused to hand over his mobile phone to police, in defiance of a court order. The probe is ongoing and Salles has denied any wrongdoing, saying the investigation was “unnecessary” and “exaggerated”.

On Tuesday, Bolsonaro praised Salles, saying: “The marriage of agriculture and the environment was almost perfect. Congratulations, Ricardo Salles. It is not easy to occupy your ministry.”

pic.twitter.com/Hk8ylQaRrv

— Ricardo Salles MMA (@rsallesmma) May 15, 2021

But the next day, Salles resigned. Brazilian magazine Veja reports that the Supreme Court was about to release a “bombshell” in its investigation and Salles may have been required to send his mobile phone to US authorities to unlock its password. The organisation Salles is accused of colluding with smuggled illegal timber to the USA.

Environmentalists said Leite, who was reportedly appointed on Salles’s recommendation, has similar views to his former boss.

Former environment minister Izabella Teixera told Climate Home News: “He’s a man that comes from agriculture sector – doesn’t have experience on environmental institutions and also joined Salles to discuss carbon markets.”

Claudio Angelo, from the Brazilian NGO Climate Observatory, called him “a carbon cowboy with close ties to agribusiness who will hardly change anything”.

Carlos Rittl, a Brazilian researcher at the Potsdam Institute, said he “has roots in the same archaic ruralism where Salles came from, that looks at forests and forest dwellers with 17th-century eyes: as obstacles to be taken out of its way.”

A logging yard and dock in the Amazon. There is no suggestion of criminality by those pictured. (Photo: Greenpeace/Daniel Beltra)

While Brazil’s domestic environmental policy is not expected to change, Teixera said Leite would have less power than Salles and the foreign ministry was likely to gain more control of climate talks.

Under pressure from the political centre, Bolsonaro recently replaced his climate-denying foreign minister Ernest Araujo with a career diplomat Carlos Alberto França, who has tried to re-integrate Brazil with multilateral organisations like the UN.

Led by Salles, Brazil’s climate negotiation team blocked progress on talks to establish common rules for carbon markets at the last UN climate conference in Madrid, Spain, in 2019, by refusing provisions that would prevent the double counting of emission reductions.

While at the summit, Salles trolled fellow delegates by tweeting a photo of a meat platter “to offset our Cop emissions”. Demand for beef is a major driver of Amazon deforestation, as trees are cleared for cattle ranching.

According to Veja and the Guardian, controversial talks between the US State Department and the Brazilian government had been suspended after the second investigation into Salles was announced. The State Department told Climate Home News last Friday that the talks were “continuing”.

The post Months after criminal probes launched, Brazilian environment minister quits appeared first on Climate Home News.

On the campaign trail, Joe Biden promised to mobilise $20 billion in private and public money to stop “tearing down” the Amazon, warning of “significant economic consequences” otherwise — comments slammed by Bolsonaro as “disastrous and unnecessary”.

Now, Biden and Bolsonaro’s officials are negotiating a deal, in a key year for international climate action. Both leaders are expected to speak at a US-hosted climate summit next Thursday.

“As we lead up to the President’s Leaders Summit on Climate, we want to see a very clear commitment to ending illegal deforestation,” a US State Department official told Climate Home News, and “tangible steps to increase effective enforcement of illegal deforestation”. The US believes Brazil can achieve a “real decrease” in deforestation by the end of the 2021 fire season.

The spokesperson continued: “We continue to recognize that conservation and sustainable economic growth can go hand in hand. It is a complex challenge that also will require new and innovative solutions – solutions that include local community engagement, including indigenous and traditional communities, as well as new technologies and approaches to providing incentives.”

Sign up to our new daily newsletter for essential climate news and analysis, straight to your inbox

At the same time, US officials have engaged directly with indigenous leaders in Brazil, who complain their interests in the region are ignored or attacked by their own government.

On Monday, eight Brazilian indigenous leaders spoke online to Jonathan Pershing, the US official in charge of the negotiations, and US ambassador Todd Chapman. Dinamam Tuxá, executive co-ordinator of Brazil’s Indigenous People Articulation, was at the meeting.

Tuxá told Climate Home News: “We shared a lot of concern with climate change and the current situation around the conservation of the forest. They said it was a moment to listen to indigenous people because they understand the importance of indigenous peoples in protecting the forest and addressing climate change.”

Indigenous leaders called on US companies to stop buying products linked to Amazon deforestation and the US to pressure the Brazilian government to give indigenous people autonomy over their land.

The US state department spokesperson said: “We encourage indigenous and Brazilian government leaders to continue constructive dialogues on the environment.” But Tuxá said: “There is no dialogue with the indigenous peoples of Brazil. That’s not because the indigenous people refuse to speak but because Brazilian government policy does not allow for this to happen… the Brazilian government is not worried about indigenous peoples and protecting the forests”.

Na carta, os indígenas lembram que a conservação das florestas é maior nos territórios indígenas, mencionam seu “papel estratégico e fundamental para a preservação da Amazônia”.
Via Valor Econômico.

SAIBA MAIS NO SITE DA APIB: https://t.co/DaSIJSBOJ4
#ApibOficial pic.twitter.com/IgyEbNhNnz

— Dinamam Tuxá (@Dinamam) April 12, 2021

Carlos Rittl, a former director of the Climate Observatory NGO, said the US “needs to be aware that they are negotiating with a government that declared war against the Amazon and indigenous people, who are seeing their forests invaded by environmental criminals, their leader being murdered and their elders dying from Covid-19”.

Brazil’s president Jair Bolsonaro has repeatedly made racist comments about indigenous people. In the 1990s, he said indigenous people should have been decimated in Brazil like they were in the USA. In 2020, he said indigenous people “are increasingly becoming human beings just like us”.

Bolsonaro has encouraged mining on protected indigenous lands, refused to grant land rights to indigenous people and overseen a disastrous response to Covid-19, which is hitting indigenous communities hard. In 2019, Global Witness said 24 Brazilian environmental activists were killed including indigenous Emyra Waiãpi and Firmino and Raimundo Guajajara.

Joe Biden’s $1.2bn budget for Green Climate Fund falls short of campaigner demands

Over 200 Brazilian NGOs have warned the US against giving money to Bolsonaro’s government without strict conditions.

One is the Climate Observatory. Its director Marco Astrini said: “Brazil is today a divided country. On one side there are indigenous peoples, quilombolas [descendants of former slaves], scientists, environmentalists and other people that fight for life and against deforestation. On the other side is the Bolsonaro regime, threatening human rights and democracy and [putting] the Amazon [at] risk. Biden must pick a side.”

But the Brazilian government, led by environment minister Ricardo Salles, has resisted conditions on the funding. Salles has said he wants $1bn in aid in order to reduce deforestation by 30-40%. 

According to Brazilian newspaper Folha de Sao Paulo, Salles’s presentation to US negotiators featured a dog looking hungrily at a rotisserie chicken through a shop window. Above the chickens, who had dollar signs on their chests, were the words “expectation of payment”. In this metaphor, the Brazilian government is the dog and US finance the inaccessible meat.

Izabella Teixera was the environment minister between 2010 and 2016. She told Climate Home News that giving $1bn a year in aid would not solve the problem. Over 90% of Brazilian deforestation is illegal, she noted, saying there shouldn’t be financial conditions on stopping environmental crime. She added that Brazil had financial support to tackle deforestation through the Amazon Fund, until the Bolsonaro government’s policies led major donors Norway and Germany to freeze their support.

To avoid supporting Bolsonaro’s federal government, campaigners are hoping that the US will give funding to the Legal Amazon, a consortium of nine Amazon regional states. “That would be a smart move,” said André Guimarães, director of Amazon research group IPAM. “[The Legal Amazon] have put together a pretty comprehensive deforestation combat plan.”

The states of the ‘legal amazon’. (Photo: OS2 Warp/WikiCommons)

Dinamam Tuxá said that indigenous peoples generally had a better relationship with state governments than with Brasilia. “There’s usually mutual respect and dialogue,” he said. “In some states, we’ve worked together to build a strong power to fight deforestation.”

But Teixera said sub-national governments’ relationships with foreign states was a “very sensitive issue” in international diplomacy. When Teixera was in government, Germany gave money to individual Brazilian states like Acre but this was only possible with the federal government’s approval, she said.

Today’s federal government was not inviting regional governors to talks, she said, but “there are other ways – not necessarily government to government – but you can have with philanthropy, institutions… to promote projects at sub-national level”.

The rate of deforestation has risen since Bolsonaro was elected. This has contributed to fires which made international headlines in 2019, sparking a war of words between Bolsonaro and French president Emmanuel Macron and endangering a trade deal between the EU and South America.

The Brazilian government’s response has been a military operation in the Amazon. Guimarães said this had been “a little bit effective”. Its ban on setting fires had shown results and the army had played an important part in the successful fight against deforestation in the 2000s. 

But the army was “only one piece of the puzzle”, he said, with other policies driving deforestation up. Bolsonaro has defunded and defanged Ibama, the agency charged with enforcing environmental regulations, and said the Amazon should be opened up to development. “It’s quite schizophrenic,” Guimarães said.

The post In Amazon protection talks, US demands action from Bolsonaro appeared first on Climate Home News.

I was among the critics who argued that slashing tariffs on goods imported into the EU from Brazil, Argentina, Uruguay and Paraguay, would fuel demand for Brazilian commodities that could lead to additional deforestation if proper safeguards were not in place.

In the 18 months since, opposition to the Mercosur Agreement has intensified, both in Europe and Brazil.

From European campaigners to Brazilian Indigenous groups, and from countries to parliaments, there has been outrage at the soaring deforestation in the Amazon, along with the devastating fires which have swept through there two years in a row. These environmental atrocities have run in tandem with social crimes: as Brazil has witnessed an increasing number of violent land grabs and murders of a record number of Indigenous Peoples.

Underpinning these events is the perilous course charted by the Brazilian government, led by President Jair Bolsonaro, which has reduced the country’s environmental protections and led proposals to open Indigenous’ Peoples’ lands for commercial use.

But how much more damage is the Mercosur deal really likely to cause?

The agreement — which took 20 years to negotiate — still needs to be signed by the European Council, approved by the European Parliament, and then ratified by the national parliaments of EU member states, and this question will be central to their deliberations.

Bolsonaro’s attack on the Amazon breaches Brazil’s constitution, climate lawyers argue

Two studies, one conducted by the London School of Economics (LSE) for the European Commission, released in July, and one by the Commission Ambec for France, published in September, have both identified the trade deal’s likely negative impact.

While the estimates vary across the studies, they are clear that the severity of the environmental impact in Brazil will grow without an effective approach to environmental and human rights protections in the country. A new study by researchers hired by the Brazilian NGO Imazon goes further, suggesting that other experts have underestimated the impact of efforts in Brazil to weaken environmental safeguards and undermine Indigenous rights to their land.

The new study also asks where deforestation is most likely to occur as a direct result of the Mercosur deal, with a focus on Brazil’s Amazon and Cerrado regions.

Ultimately free trade agreements reverberate in local communities: in the individual lives of men, women and children, and in the destruction of the unique patches of forest and habitats which surround them.  Knowing the territories at greatest risk of deforestation under different circumstances, helps provide the insights necessary to prevent it.

The research team that Imazon pulled together found that many of the areas at greatest risk of deforestation from increases in agricultural activity border Indigenous territories. The dismantling of protections for these territories will make it harder than ever for communities to resist invasion and deforestation on their lands.

The study also found that the risk of additional deforestation is greatest in areas where recent deforestation has been high – specifically the eastern and southern portions of the Brazilian Amazon biome in the States of Pará, Mato Grosso and Rondônia.

Landless Brazilians are invading more and more protected areas of the Amazon

It’s impossible to separate the impact that this trade deal will have in Brazil, while ignoring the influence of laws, policies, environmental standards and governance. So the study also weighs up the impact the trade pact will have under different policy governance scenarios.

My co-authors and I found that without strong anti-deforestation protections and good governance, the scale of additional deforestation in Brazil more than doubles. This bodes ill for the forests and forest peoples of Brazil, should the trade agreement move forward as written.

The Imazon study adds more detail to the already compelling body of evidence on the potential impacts of the pact on forests and the communities that depend on them for their livelihoods.

To address these concerns, the EU and Mercosur countries’ trading relationship should be revised to insist that companies seeking market access commit to respecting international standards on the environment and human rights. To this end, the agreement should include robust and enforceable measures.

Brazil is currently on track to miss its own National Climate Change policy targets. Before the EU considers its trade deal with Mercosur, in any form, the country’s surging deforestation trends must be reversed, and rates brought at least in line with the country’s own targets.

In the words of Kretã Kaingang, of the Articulation of Indigenous Peoples of Brazil (APIB): “We have to make it clear, when the forests burn, indigenous lives are lost. This treaty increases the threats to our lives, to our culture, and way of living. This deal will bring fire, destruction, and more illegal loggers to our territories.”

Paulo Barreto is a senior researcher at Imazon, a Brazil-based independent non-profit organisation which promotes conservation and sustainable development in the Amazon 

The post Brazil must reverse deforestation trends before EU finalises Mercosur trade deal appeared first on Climate Home News.

The environmentalists are seeking a court order on the government to reduce deforestation by 60% in 2021, in line with the national policy on climate change. If this target is missed, campaigners say deforestation should stop completely for a year.

In 2019, the Brazilian government abandoned its main anti-deforestation plan, known as PPCDAm. In the same year, president Jair Bolsonaro’s first full year in office, there was a 34% increase in deforestation.

The NGOs bringing the case argue that the scrapping of PPCDAm breached the Brazilian constitution. Article 225  states “all have the right to an ecologically balanced environment” and says the government has a duty to “defend and preserve it for present and future generations”.

Bolsonaro shifts blame for unprecedented Brazilian wetland fires

They also argue deforestation breaches Brazil’s international commitments. Greenpeace Brazil’s climate and justice co-ordinator Fabiana Alves said: “Even under a totally unambitious contribution to the international Paris Agreement, Brazil is now lacking public policy, budget and staffing to guarantee the application of our national laws. We need to stop this free fall.”

Caio Borges is the coordinator of the Instituto Clima e Sociedade’s legal programme. He told Climate Home he is aware of six ongoing legal cases against the government’s deforestation policies in the last six months. Four of these are in the Supreme Court and two are in lower courts. “They complement each other in many aspects and have some overlaps,” he said.

In this case, Borges said he expects the court to rule “that there is a systemic failure by the government to fulfill its constitutional duties and obligations on the protection of the right to a healthy environment and that a major risk posed by such omission is the exacerbation of climate change impacts on vulnerable groups, the protected biomes and biodiversity”.

What the Supreme Court will order the government to do though is an open question, Borges said. “If a systematic violation of constitutionally protected rights is found, then the court could step in to correct the state failure, ordering things such as the development of action plans to curb deforestation, compulsory allocation of resources to equip the agencies and to replenish climate funds.”

Landless Brazilians are invading more and more protected areas of the Amazon

Caroline Prolo, head of the environmental law practice at the Brazilian law firm Stocche Forbes, said that this was the first time the Supreme Court has been asked to address alleged violations of Brazil’s national climate change policy which incorporates its legally binding commitments to UN Climate Change (UNFCCC).

“If successful,” she said, “it will open an avenue for other claims of climate inaction by the federal government. If the Supreme Court recognizes that the UNFCCC´s principles are transposed and may give rise to concrete obligations under Brazilian domestic law, this could help building a legal argument around the existence of a fundamental human right for a stable climate system within Brazilian law, which could in turn make the basis for many other climate litigation cases in the country.”

The court case has been formally lodged by six opposition political parties, with the backing of 10 NGOs including Greenpeace, the Climate Observatory and the indigenous peoples’ organisation APIB. A decision on precautionary measures is expected in 2021, but the final ruling could take several years to emerge.

Environmentalists urge UN to condemn Brazil’s spying at climate talks

Climate litigation is becoming increasingly common across the world. The London-based Grantham Institute logs 412 climate lawsuits in its database, not including the US.

Norway’s Supreme Court is deliberating on calls for the Norwegian government to stop Arctic oil licenses under both the national constitution and the Paris Agreement. In April 2018, the Colombian Supreme Court ruled in favour of 25 young people and ordered the government to ensure the protection of the Amazon from deforestation to protect present and future generations.

The post Bolsonaro’s attack on the Amazon breaches Brazil’s constitution, climate lawyers argue appeared first on Climate Home News.

Fifty years later, Operation Green Brazil, led by Vice-President General Hamilton Mourão, has deployed hundreds of soldiers to try to contain deforestation and other environmental crimes enabled by the highway.

One stage where Bolsonaro’s militarised strategy against environmental crimes is playing out is Apuí, 450 kilometers south of Manaus, the capital of Amazonas state. With an area roughly the size of Croatia, the municipality was born from the Rio Juma Settlement Project, launched in the early 1980s and managed by the National Institute for Colonisation and Agrarian Reform (INCRA).

But the aim of distributing around 7,500 plots of land for family farming has not been completed. Most of those who benefited from the distribution left, amid a process of concentration of land ownership, and today the local economy is based mainly on extensive cattle ranching, the primary vector of deforestation in the Amazon region.

PHOTO 

This process of conversion of forest into pasture has gained new momentum since 2019. Despite Operation Green Brazil, Apuí lost 23,186 hectares from January to August – 5.1% more than the total area cleared last year. The numbers come from the non-governmental initiative MapBiomas, which monitors land use in Brazil.

The military has been in Apuí twice this year operating under the guarantee of law and order powers. The focus of the first incursion, from 20 to 26 June, was fighting deforestation, with the participation of Ibama, the Brazilian Institute of the Environment and Renewable Natural Resources, since the military is unable to carry out procedures such as applying fines.

The second time the army went to Apuí, in August, it provided support to firefighting efforts undertaken mainly by the town’s firefighters, hired through an Ibama national programme for preventing forest fires, known as Prevfogo.

PHOTO 

Joint operations involving the armed forces, Ibama and the Chico Mendes Institute for Biodiversity Conservation ( ICMBio) are not a new feature of the Bolsonaro era. The difference is that, in the past, the military was limited to providing logistic support for operations such as camping, transportation of seized good and land, river and air travel.

And the presence of soldiers has a deterrent effect on criminals who almost always have firearms. This effect is temporary, however, lasting only during the operation.

Since the wave of forest fires last year, Bolsonaro has transferred the command of operations in the Amazon region to the military. Ibama inspectors accompany the soldiers to write up reports; they are consulted but do not have the power to make decisions on targets and strategies.

One of the main differences is that in the operations they take part in, the armed forces do not allow the destruction of equipment used by criminals in areas of cleared forest and artisanal mining operations, such as tractors and diggers. This is a tactic permitted by law.

Destruction of equipment is one of the main tools employed by Ibama and ICMBio in remote areas. For reasons of logistics and safety, it is almost impossible to transport the equipment to a town. Now, however, the delinquents recover their assets as soon as a military operation moves on from an area.

PHOTO

Another difference is the relationship with the press. Before Bolsonaro, Brazilian and foreign reporters used to accompany Ibama on operations in the Amazon area. The images of inspectors destroying equipment and arresting offenders in the jungle had an intimidating effect.

Now, however, Ibama and ICMBio employees have been forbidden to give interviews. General Mourão banned reporters in the operations of the second Green Brazil mission. Over the last few months, Folha made several requests to accompany the military, but all were refused.

Folha accompanied a team of inspectors from Ipaam, Amazonas state’s Environmental Protection Institute, a state government agency, for two days. The aim was to confirm on-site deforestation shown by satellites and book criminals caught breaking the law. Despite promises of army support, military police officers provided the protective escort.

On the first day, the team covered 100 km on the Trans-Amazonian Highway and then turned into a side road. After 15 km of dense forest, the convoy reached a recently cleared area, with newly planted grass coming up between burned-out tree trunks.

A little further ahead, there was an area of 30 recently cleared hectares. Large felled and burned trees were piled on one on top of the other.

PHOTOS 

The house that seemed to be the main one of the ranch was empty. A little further ahead, we saw a parked motorcycle with a machete sheath on the seat. The person there had hidden in the forest on hearing the trucks arriving, the officers suggested.

The second day followed a similar pattern: a bumpy dirt road and no arrests. But the recently cleared area was a lot bigger: 400 hectares.
Ipaam stated that on the days Folha accompanied their agents (August 24 and 25), the deforested areas identified came to 2,429 hectares. However, no environmental fine or embargo has been imposed so far because those responsible for the deforestation have not been identified.

The difficulties of fighting deforestation have led the environmental secretary of the state of Amazonas, Eduardo Taveira, to reduce the goals. In June, during the launch of Operation Curuquetê 2, he said the goal was a 15% reduction of the deforested area in Amazonas state from August 2020 to July 2021. Now he says that if deforestation does not continue growing that will already be an excellent result.

Taveira insists the state government’s scope of action is limited because 80% of all deforestation takes place in federal public lands. In these cases, Ipaam can only check if the activities undergone are subject to state environmental licensing.

Another difficulty is identifying those responsible. In the entire state of Amazonas, Taveira says that only 20 of the 58,000 self-declared rural environmental registries, known as Cadastros Ambientais Rurais (CAR), have been verified – no more than 0.03% of the total number. “How can we identify offenders when there is this accountability void? We must increase land regularisation efforts to resolve this situation,” he said.

Created in 2012, CAR is a mandatory electronic self-declared public registry for rural properties. In theory, it should include information such as the situation of permanent preservation areas and legal reserves of native vegetation created to control and fight deforestation. In practice, it has been used by land grabbers to try and legalise invaded and deforested public areas.

As part of the Green Brazil operation, Taveira says the Bolsonaro government remains close to the Military Command of the Amazon and that the state of Amazonas has been receiving logistic support. But he mentions an absence of coordination.

Speaking through its press office, the ministry of defence gave out mistaken dates on which Operation Green Brazil was supposed to have been deployed in Apuí and did not provide specific data on the results of the armed forces’ work in the municipality.

Operation Green Brazil 2 began on 11 May and is expected to conclude on 6 November, subject to extension. The cost of the armed forces resources and personnel deployed between 11 May and 10 June has been estimated at R$ 60 million ($10.8 million). For the following period, a monthly cost of R$ 70 million ($12.6 million) is estimated.

A recent study of 35 years of land policy in Apuí shows there was rapid deforestation taking place in the municipality already before Bolsonaro. From 2013 to 2018, deforestation in the area grew at twice the rate of the rest of the Amazon region.

Authored by researchers Gabriel Cardoso Carrero and Philip Fearnside, among others, the study was published in the Environmental Management journal. It points out that the growth of cattle ranching in Apuí shows the area is part of the market demand for beef. But it also highlights the actions of criminal groups that use deforestation and creation of pastureland to seize public lands illegally.

The study says it is necessary to identify who the land grabbers are, who funds the deforestation and identifying the different actors involved.

Cattle rancher Paulo Lopez has been in the region for 40 years and says the greatest deforesters come from outside Apuí. According to him, the land market has grown with the arrival of buyers from the state of Rondônia, where commercial farming is gaining ground over cattle raising.

PHOTO

Lopez believes the fight against deforestation requires the regularisation of land ownership, an unfulfilled promise made by successive federal governments. “I have been to many meetings in which it was said that land regularisation was going to take place. I don’t know if it hasn’t happened yet because the government is unwilling or because it’s incompetent.”

According to the environmental secretary of Apuí, Domingos Bonfim, only a tiny proportion of properties in the municipality are regularised. Even among people settled by Incra, the National Institute for Colonisation and Agrarian Reform, he says, not even 5% have the final title deed to their land. But for any progress to be possible, the environmental liabilities brought about by years of illegal deforestation need to be resolved.

“There is this paradox. There is no land ownership regularisation, which is needed to regularise environmental issues. And to move ahead with environmental regularisation, you need to regularise land tenure.”

This reporting is part of The Amazon under Bolsonaro, a collaboration between Folha De S.Paulo and Climate Home News. Translated from the Portuguese by Clara Allain. 

The post Brazil’s military operations are not halting deforestation in the Amazon appeared first on Climate Home News.

The post Amazon land grabbers are destroying brazil nut groves for cattle pasture appeared first on Climate Home News.

For the region’s inhabitants, the town is the heart of a municipality approximately the size of England, inhabited by 23 indigenous peoples.

The world’s largest deposit of niobium can be found a few dozen kilometres from the city – a mineral that has become an obsession of President Jair Bolsonaro and the Brazilian far right.

There are 2.9 billion tonnes of untouched niobium underground. Above them, mountains, rocky formations of varied shapes, orchids and many-hued lakes make up one of the most unique areas in the Amazonian region, far from the endless green plain usually associated with the rainforest.

Before the start of the novel coronavirus pandemic, this reporter and photographer visited the area, known as Seis Lagos (Six Lakes), guided by inhabitants of the Balaio TI (Indigenous Territory). The communities living in the TI are discussing where their region is better suited to tourism or mining, but their greatest concern is their almost total isolation due to the state of disrepair of the road leading to it, the BR-307.

“Some people would like to extract the minerals, but it’s actually very complex to work that. Others see the potential of ethno and environmental tourism”, says Indigenous health worker André Veloso, 32, who guided Folha’s reporters, referring to the views of the 350 inhabitants of the territory, belonging to several different peoples.

Again, maps can be misleading. The distance from São Gabriel to the Ya-Mirim community, gateway to Seis Lagos, is a mere 85 km by the BR-307, crossing the line of the Equator. But the federal highway is actually a muddy track that can only be traversed by Toyota Bandeirante four-by-fours. It took us four and a half hours to cover the distance, moving at 19 kph. Cost of the return journey: R$2,000.

Having arrived at the community and spent the night there, we travelled upstream for two hours on the river of the same name. Then came the most exhausting part of the trip: four hours hiking up a mountain.  Along the way, the trees decrease in height as the terrain rises and the ground grows more rocky. Along the way we see the first lake, with green water, at the bottom of a valley.

We camped out for a night beside the Dragão (Dragon) Lake, surrounded by sharp earth-coloured rocks and a forest of medium height trees and bushes, some of them flowering. Mists are common in the area, and when they arrive, they cover everything in a split second.

Legislation and market for niobium

There are two almost insurmountable obstacles to mining niobium in Seis Lagos. Present legislation precludes mining in Seis Lagos. The site is included in three overlapping protected areas: besides the Balaio TI, it is part of Serra da Neblina National Park and Morro dos Seis Lagos Biological Reserve, belonging to the Amazonas state government. Mining activity is not allowed in any of these places.

Another obstacle to mining the Amazonian niobium is the lack of demand. Every projection drawn up shows the niobium deposits being mined today have enough capacity to supply the world market for many decades to come.

Brazil is already the main worldwide producer of niobium, with 88% of global production, according to the US Geological Survey. Most of the metal comes from CBMM (Companhia Brasileira de Metalurgia e Mineração), controlled by the partner family of Itaú Unibanco. Situated in Araxá (Minas Gerais state), the company estimates its deposits can produce enough niobium for at least another two centuries.

“Mining companies have no interest in Morro dos Seis Lagos,” says geologist Tadeu Veiga, at present a voluntary professor at UnB (University of Brasília). He travelled the region in 1997 as a representative of a mining company. At the time, CRPM (the Brazilian Geological Service) intended to bid for the mining rights in Morro dos Seis Lagos, but the plans never went ahead.

Despite the lack of a market for any increased production, Bolsonaro often uses niobium to justify starting mining operations in Indigenous lands. The activity is allowed by the Constitution, as long as it is regulated and follows prior consultation with the peoples involved.

In 2016, while preparing for the presidential campaign, Bolsonaro produced a video about niobium, filmed in Araxá. Holding up a piece of the metal, he stated: “This can give us economic independence.” In another part of his statement he mentioned the demarcation of Indigenous lands as a barrier to mining.

The most recent statement was made in June 2019. From Japan, where he was attending the G20 meeting, Bolsonaro, in a Facebook livestream, showed some costume jewellery made of niobium. He said the chain was worth R$4,000, more than if it had been made of gold.

The information is wrong. One gram of gold was worth R$293 at the end of May 2020 –more than the cost of one kilo of ferroniobium, around R$215, CBMM’s most expensive product.

The false idea that niobium could be a magic bullet that would solve the problems of Brazil’s economy comes from the ultranationalist leader Enéas Carneiro, whose ideas influenced Bolsonaro’s thinking. “Only niobium would allow us to have our own currency, backed by it,” he said in an interview in 2006, a year before his death.

In February Bolsonaro sent to Congress a bill opening up Indigenous lands to mining. Criticized by most of the Indigenous movement, the bill says the Indigenous peoples affected would have the power to veto garimpos (artisanal mining projects), but not large mining company projects.

Bolsonaro argued at the time, in an attempt to justify the bill, that “Indigenous people have a heart, they have feelings, they have a soul, they have needs and desires and are as Brazilian as we are.”

Combined with Bolsonaro’s instructions to put a brake on the actions of Ibama (the state environmental agency), the promise of legalizing mining activity has stimulated an invasion of garimpeiros (artisanal miners). In April, two inspecting coordinators of the agency were dismissed as a reprisal for the closure of garimpos in Indigenous lands located in the Middle Xingu area, in Pará state.

Also boosted by the rise in gold prices, illegal garimpos have been on the increase in the Indigenous Territories of  Raposa/Serra do Sol (Roraima state), Yanomami (Roraina and Amazonas), and Munduruku (Pará state), among others.

There are no garimpos in TI Balaio, but the area is on the route followed by garimpeiros on the way to illegal gold mines in the Yanomami TI and in Venezuela. They count on the tacit cooperation of the Army checkpoint on the road, which turns a blind eye to them.

When Folha’s reporters passed through, the soldiers appeared to be concerned only with identifying possible foreign nationals. After answering a few questions to confirm our nationality, we were not even required to show our ID. In the Ya-Mirim community, at least three garimpeiros were waiting for transportation.

Area is hard to reach

The poor condition of the road leading to the area causes enormous difficulties for the Indigenous people of TI Balaio and also the Yanomamis of the Maturacá community, with around 2,100 inhabitants. To reach their homes, they still need to travel for about a day on the Ya-Mirim river, that crosses the community, on canoes powered by the cheapest outboard engine.

The Indigenous people go to São Gabriel da Cachoeira frequently to receive their Bolsa Família and other benefits. Quite often they spend all the benefit money on transport.

Due to the high cost, several families often share the rental of the Toyota. The open back part of the pickup is shared by many people, including children and seniors. Mechanical problems and breakdowns in the mud are the rule rather than the exception, and travellers often have to spend the night on the road until they can be rescued by another Toyota driver.

“It’s a sad business. People here face great hardships,” says Tiago Fernandes Sampaio, 49, president of the TI Balaio association and a member of the PSDB (Brazilian Social Democracy Party). “It used to be that the trip took two hours. Not now, though. Sometimes you leave before dawn and arrive at dawn of the next day. The Toyota auto parts break down midway. If you are taking people who are gravely ill to get help, they sometimes die on the road.”

Besides the locals and garimpeiros, this route is also followed by tourists who want to climb Pico da Neblina, the highest peak of Brazil, accessible via Maturacá. The mountain is located within the Pico da Neblina National Park and also within the Yanomami territory. Before the Covid-19 pandemic, the trip to São Gabriel was made by air from Manaus. There used to be three commercial flights a week, but they have been suspended due to the pandemic.

Authorized by Funai (the governmental agency for Indigenous peoples) and ICMBio (administrative arm of the Ministry of the Environment), the visitation project was seen as a source of income for the Yanomami of Maturacá and was intended to start in March, but the Covid-19 pandemic has postponed it indefinitely.

The experience of Yanomamis receiving visitors has been closely monitored in the TI Balaio. “The most feasible option for us right now would be tourism,” says chief Veloso, of the Desana people, comparing it to mining. “We have many beautiful spots, the community, waterfalls, small rivers which allow for bathing. All that is needed is some structure and organization.”

“Adding ecotourism to the ethnic experience of spending time with Indigenous peoples, who would be visitors’ hosts, would add a special flavour to this destination,” says tourism entrepreneur Kleber Bechara, former head of the Seis Lagos Rebio (Biological Reserve).

He believes there is potential for expedition tourism. “This is a remote area, difficult to access. With the proper infrastructure it could become an added attraction for a specific niche of the public that is interested in having experiences of this kind, with safety.”

The Army’s Centre for Social Communications reported by e-mail they are carrying out repairs and maintenance by means of two operations, at a cost of R$19,2 million, to ensure the road is usable up to TI Balaio. The work is forecast to be completed by November this year.

Regarding the policy of allowing garimpeiros to pass through the checkpoint, the answer was “there is no kind of checkpoint maintained by the Brazilian Army on the aforementioned BR (highway).”

Debating mining

With or without niobium extraction, mining has been one of the issues most discussed among the Indigenous peoples since the 1970s, at least, when the region was invaded by garimpeiros and mining concerns.

To expel them, the Indigenous people organized themselves in Foirn (Federation of Indigenous Organizations of the Rio Negro), that was created in 1987 and lobbied for the demarcation of Indigenous lands. Today the organization brings together 90 associations representing 700 communities and around 50 thousand people divided between 23 Indigenous peoples.

“They invaded our territory, and we had no security. Indigenous people and garimpeiros were slaughtered,” says the head of Foirn, Adão Henrique, of the Baré people. “Thanks to the strength of the movement and to Funai, they retreated.”

Contrary to Bolsonaro’s suggestion, the federal government has never got in touch with Foirn to discuss mining, says Henrique. According to him, the organization is open to discussing the question.

“We want development, but with participative discussion. It has to be done step by step, following legislation, both international and Brazilian,” he says. “Our movement will continue to strongly oppose the proposals of the present government. We don’t want the Rio Negro Indigenous peoples be harmed or deluded with projects destined to fail.”

Politically distant from Foirn, the mayor of São Gabriel da Cachoeira, Clóvis Saldanha (PT), known as Tarubão, of the Tariano people, was elected on the promise of regulating Indigenous garimpos –he has worked on garimpos himself. When he became mayor, in 2018, Saldanha created the Responsible Smallhold Mining Department, with the aim of promoting mining without the involvement of large companies.

One of the department’s advisors is Cisneia Menezes Basilio, of the Desana people. She graduated from Ufam (Federal University of Amazonas) and is the first indigenous geologist in the country.

Basilio says there is great geological diversity in this region, but it has been little studied so far. She mentions deposits of tantalite (used in the tech industry) and gold, as well quartz and gemstones such as amethyst, quartz, and aquamarine beryl. Like other specialists, she doesn’t believe it is feasible to mine niobium in Seis Lagos.

In the mayor’s office, the geologist says the aim is to stimulate the incipient production of biojewellery, training craftspeople and taking information about mineral exploration and legislation to the communities.

“When the communities heard about the existence of the department and that it had a geologist, they started coming to us with their samples to try and identify them, wanting to know about prices and imagining that those little quartz, amethyst or tantalum stones would be able to change their lives,” she said in an interview in her office, where she keeps several of these samples.

“What the people of São Gabriel need isn’t liberation or mining, but information. What is being discussed in Congress are large-scale mining operations, and our people at the grassroots often imagine this is something that will give them work and will benefit them directly. We know that is not true,” she says.

“We don’t lie to them, on the contrary. Our department’s role is to inform the people of their rights enshrined in the 1988 Constitution and research possible activities in which Indigenous people can be the main actors and can enjoy the fruits of their natural resources.”

This reporting is part of The Amazon under Bolsonaro, a collaboration between Folha De S.Paolo and Climate Home News. All photos: Lalo de Almeida/FolhapressSilva. Translated from the Portuguese by Clara Allain

The post The Amazon home of Bolsonaro’s mineral fantasy appeared first on Climate Home News.

From January to March, deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon rose 51% compared to the same time last year, according to preliminary satellite data from the space research agency INPE.

Combined with a low rainfall forecast for the May to October dry season, this forest clearance creates the conditions for rampant wildfires, according to the Amazon Environmental Research Institute (Ipam).

“This year’s fire could be 50% worse than what we had last year,” Paulo Moutinho, a senior scientist at Ipam, told Climate Home News by video call from Brazil.

In tandem with an opening up of the rainforest to loggers, ranchers and miners, the coronavirus pandemic is spreading fast through Amazonas capital Manaus and indigenous communities. Smoke from forest fires could make it even deadlier, as it contains pollutants that have been linked to increased risk of dying from Covid-19.

“Covid-19 and deforestation are two crises that are entirely connected,” said Moutinho. “We have all the elements for the perfect storm.”

Amazon special report: The second death of Chico Mendes

Land grabbing and illegal gold mining on public land without official demarcation have significantly increased since President Jair Bolsonaro came to power in January 2019.

Emboldened by Bolsonaro’s promise to open up the Amazon for business, people seeking to exploit its resources have laid a web of unofficial roads. Now, their incursions into the forest risk spreading Covid-19 to indigenous land, where health facilities are minimal or non-existent.

As of Monday, the number of confirmed Covid-19 cases in Brazil was nearing 100,000 with more 6,750 people killed by the virus. Manaus, the largest city in the Amazon basin, has been one of Brazil’s worst affected.

According to the Coordination of Indigenous Organisations of the Brazilian Amazon (Coiab), at least 26 indigenous people living in the Amazon have now died from Covid-19. They believe the true toll of the disease is higher, with many cases going unrecorded.

Brazilian photojournalist Sebastião Salgado is leading a campaign for the government to establish an army-led taskforce to evict intruders from protected areas and indigenous land.

“Native communities, some living in isolation in the Amazon Basin, could be completely eliminated, without any defense against the coronavirus,” he wrote, warning of “a real risk of genocide”.

Climate news in your inbox? Sign up here

Harvard University’s school of public health recently established that long term exposure to PM2.5 air pollution, which is produced by wildfires, is linked to a higher death rate from Covid-19.

“Reducing deforestation has become an act of public health,” Moutinho told CHN. Brazil’s government and state authorities need to take strong action or “the situation will be bad,” he said.

Last week Brazil’s vice president Hamilton Mourão, appointed earlier this year to coordinate the protection and development of the Amazon among ministries, announced plans to deploy armed forces to combat deforestation and fires in the forest.

The army has a positive record of working with environmental organisations and the federal police, pooling knowledge and resources to halt illegal activities and prevent deforestation and fires.

“But having the army by itself is not going to help because it doesn’t have the intelligence to lead on this. This is just an easy announcement but there are no plans for the future,” Adriana Ramos, coordinator at the Instituto Socioambiental (ISA), an organisation which works to protect social and environmental rights and works closely with indigenous people, told CHN.

Renewables most resilient to Covid-19 lockdown measures, says IEA

Since his election, President Bolsonaro has weakened environmental regulations and the organisations enforcing them.

While announcing plans to deploy the army in the Amazon, the government was also removing senior inspection staff working at Ibama, Brazil’s environment protection agency, following media reports of an operation to track illegal miners in indigenous lands in the state of Pará, which has seen some of the country’s largest deforestation rates.

Ibama is also the governmental agency with the most on the ground intelligence about environmental crimes in the Amazon, Daniel Azeredo, a federal prosecutor based in the capital Brasilia, told CHN. “And it is being dismantled.”

“The presence of the military in the region may bring some immediate result, but it won’t deliver significant structural changes. It is an emergency measure and does not provide a lasting solution,” he said.

Azeredo added keeping the military active in the region would be very expensive at a time when the country’s resources are being mobilised to address the coronavirus pandemic.

Comment: No silver lining to coronavirus, but a golden opportunity

In Brasilia, Congress is preoccupied with a proposed amnesty for land grabbers. Put forward by President Bolsonaro in December, the measure would regularise the ownership of public land that was illegally deforested and occupied before 2018, providing certain criteria are met. The text needs congressional approval by 19 May to be adopted.

It is a revision of an existing 2009 law that allowed people occupying public land without demarcation before 2004 to receive land titles. In 2018, Congress extended the deadline to land occupied before 2011. This would be the third extension.

Brenda Brito, an associate researcher at Imazon, an organisation dedicated to protecting the Amazon, told CHN: “Every time Congress agrees to change the date, it is sending a signal that people can continue to occupy land and lobby for new legislation. That deadline has no credibility.”

Under the proposal, squatters would be permitted to buy the land from the government at a fraction of market value – a loss Imazon estimated at $30 billion.

“The government itself is promoting the politics of invasion,” said Ramos of ISA. At the same time, it “wanted to show the international community that it is doing something” against deforestation and wildfires by deploying the army.

“I believe that the guys on the ground will try to do their best,” she added, saying the spread of Covid-19 across the Amazon gave an extra imperative to stop illegal trespassers from entering protected indigenous territories.

Merkel: don’t neglect climate finance to the world’s poor

“We need the army. I hope they can do a good job because otherwise there will be a lot of people dying,” Moutinho, of Ipam, agreed.

Ipam has been calling for governance in the Amazon region based on long-term strategies to address deforestation and fires in the wider context of land grabbing and illegal mining and logging.

Recent deforestation patterns in the Amazon show land clearance is increasing in non-designated public forests – those public areas that are not officially protected or marked as indigenous land.

In the first quarter of this year, unmarked public forests accounted for 46% of registered deforestation – up from 30% during the same period last year.

Brazil has over 65 million hectares of un-designated public forests in the Amazon – an area the size of France never officially allocated by the government.

For Moutinho, establishing new protected areas or indigenous land and promoting the sustainable use of forest resources such as rubber and forest nuts, could save trees from the chop.

“As a Brazilian society, we know how to [reduce deforestation],” he said, but there needs to be a plan.

The post Amazon faces ‘perfect storm’ of forest clearance, coronavirus and wildfire appeared first on Climate Home News.

The post Indigenous lands, protected areas limit Amazon’s carbon emissions appeared first on Climate Home News.

In an indication that Bolsonaro, a far-right conservative, is forging closer ties with neighbouring countries than European nations, he also accepted an offer from Chile of four aircraft to help fight the fires sweeping through the world’s largest rainforest.

Speaking to journalists on Wednesday after a meeting with Chilean president Sebastian Pinera in Brasilia, Bolsonaro said that a meeting with regional neighbours except Venezuela to discuss a common policy in defence of the Amazon will be held on 6 September in the Colombian city of Leticia.

G7 countries offer $20 million emergency aid to fight Amazon wildfires

Pinera offered his full backing to Bolsonaro, saying the sovereignty of the nations that share the Amazon had to be respected, while Bolsonaro said that Brazil’s sovereignty had “no price, not even $20 trillion.”

That was a reference to an offer of $20 million aid announced by French president Emmanuel Macron at a summit of the G7 wealthy nations in Biarritz over the weekend, which Bolsonaro dismissed as an insulting attempt to “buy” Brazil’s sovereignty.

Climate news straight to your inbox? Sign up here

Macron has accused Bolsonaro of lying about climate change.

“The French government called me a liar. Only after it has recanted what it said about me … and the Brazilian people, who do not accept this diminution of the Amazon’s sovereignty … if so, then we can talk again,” Bolsonaro said.

The post Brazil says South American countries will meet over Amazon wildfires appeared first on Climate Home News.

Despite record wildfires in the Amazon and president Jair Bolsonaro previously saying his government lacked the money to fight the blazes, the Brazilian government suggested it will reject the offer.

Foreign minister Ernesto Araujo said on Twitter that a new initiative for the Amazon was not needed and that international mechanisms under the UN climate convention were already in place to fight deforestation.

“Brazil will not accept any initiative that implies weakening sovereignty over its territory, whatever the pretext and whatever the guise,” he added.

Responding to the G7 offer, Bolsonaro’s chief of staff, Onyx Lorenzoni, told Brazilian news website Globo: “Thanks, but maybe those resources are more relevant to reforest Europe.”

Personal relations between French president Emmanuel Macron and Bolsonaro, already strained by the crisis in the Amazon, deteriorated even further after Brazil’s leader mocked Macron’s wife on Facebook.

Ireland threatens to block Mercosur trade deal unless Brazil protects Amazon

Facing increased isolation abroad for his stance on the unfolding environmental crisis, Bolsonaro also found himself under mounting pressure at home, with a poll on Monday showing that his government’s approval rating sank to 29.4% in August.

“We will straightaway offer Amazonian countries that signal to us their needs, financial support,” Macron said in the wealthy resort of Biarritz on France’s Atlantic coast.

Many of the fires sweeping through the Amazon are thought to have been started deliberately in Brazil, with environmentalists blaming speculators who burn vegetation to clear it in hopes of selling the land to farmers and ranchers.

Global anger and concern has been steadily rising as the blazes have raged because of the rainforest’s importance to the environment. The Amazon is often described as “the lungs of the world” due to its vast ability to absorb carbon dioxide.

Climate news straight to your inbox? Sign up here

Within minutes of the G7 move, however, Bolsonaro said Brazil was being treated like “a colony or no man’s land,” and denounced the creation of an international alliance to save the Amazon as an attack on his nation’s sovereignty.

However, Brazil’s environment minister Ricardo Salles struck a different note, calling the aid “welcome.”

Later on Monday, presidential spokesman said Bolsonaro might visit the Amazon region later this week, to check on the efforts to combat the fires.

Calling the Amazon fires a global emergency, Macron pushed the disaster to the top of the G7 agenda and said the member states were ready to provide concrete help.

“France will do so with military support in the coming hours,” he said, without giving further details.

Canada said it would send water bombers to Brazil to help contain the blaze and was also contributing C$15 million ($11.30 million) in aid.

“One of the things we have seen over the past years as Canada has faced increasingly extreme wildfire events is there is a global network of support and friends that lean on each other,” prime minister Justin Trudeau said at the end of the summit.

Record 72,000 forest fires detected in Brazil this year

More international celebrities voiced their concern over the fires on Monday, with actor Leonardo DiCaprio telling Reuters that the crisis is “incredibly tragic” and that governments must do more to fight climate change. DiCaprio also pledged $5 million for the rainforest.

Chilean president Sebastián Piñera was invited to join the wealthy-nation leaders in Biarritz, and said the G7 plan would be implemented in two stages.

“Countries urgently need fire fighters and specialised water bombers. This will be the first step that will be implemented immediately. The second phase is to protect these forests, protect the biodiversity they contain and reforest this region of the world,” he added.

The Amazon is home to an estimated one million indigenous people from up to 500 tribes as well some three million species of plants and animals, including jaguars, sloths, giant otters, river dolphins, howler monkeys, toucans, reptiles, frogs and insects.

China invites the US back to the table at Chile climate talks

Macron added that the G7, which comprises the US, France, Germany, Japan, Italy, the UK and Canada, would draw up an initiative for the Amazon that will be launched at next month’s UN general assembly in New York.

On Monday, Brazil’s foreign ministry ordered its ambassadors in Europe and other G7 countries not to take vacations for the next two weeks in order to coordinate a diplomatic response to global concerns over the fires.

US president Donald Trump was absent from the talks on climate change and biodiversity at a G7 session on Monday, and Macron said he had been busy holding bilateral meetings. “He wasn’t in the room, but his team was,” Macron said. “You shouldn’t read anything into the American president’s absence… The US are with us on biodiversity and on the Amazon initiative.”

However, in his closing news conference at the summit, Trump made clear he was not about to embrace the environmentalist cause.

“We are now the No. 1 energy producer in the world,” he said in response to a question about climate change. “I’m not going to lose that wealth, I’m not going to lose it on dreams, on windmills, which frankly aren’t working too well,” he added.

The post G7 countries offer $20 million emergency aid to fight Amazon wildfires appeared first on Climate Home News.

Irish Independent reported that Varadkar was very concerned at the record levels of rainforest destruction.

“There is no way that Ireland will vote for the EU-Mercosur free trade agreement if Brazil does not honour its environmental commitments,” he said.

His comments came after French president Emmanuel Macron said on Thursday that the fires are an international emergency and called for the situation to be discussed at the G7 summit this weekend.

Our house is burning. Literally. The Amazon rain forest – the lungs which produces 20% of our planet’s oxygen – is on fire. It is an international crisis. Members of the G7 Summit, let’s discuss this emergency first order in two days! #ActForTheAmazon pic.twitter.com/dogOJj9big

— Emmanuel Macron (@EmmanuelMacron) August 22, 2019

Responding on Twitter, Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro accused Macron of using “fake photos” and of “instrumentalising a domestic Brazilian issue for personal political gains”.

“The Brazilian government remains open to dialogue, based on objective data and mutual respect,” he said, adding that discussing the issue at the G7 without the participation of South American countries “evokes a misplaced colonialist mindset”.

United Nations secretary general António Guterres also took to Twitter to express his concerns.

I’m deeply concerned by the fires in the Amazon rainforest. In the midst of the global climate crisis, we cannot afford more damage to a major source of oxygen and biodiversity.

The Amazon must be protected.

— António Guterres (@antonioguterres) August 22, 2019

The wildfires raging in the Amazon rainforest have hit a record number this year, with 72,843 fires detected so far by Brazil’s space research center INPE.

The surge marks an 83% increase over the same period of 2018, the agency said on Tuesday, and is the highest since records began in 2013.

Although fires are a regular and natural occurrence during the dry season at this time of year, environmentalists blamed the sharp rise on farmers setting the forest alight to clear land for pasture.

Record 72,000 forest fires detected in Brazil this year

Farmers may have had at least tacit encouragement from the firebrand right-wing president, who took power in January. Bolsonaro has repeatedly said he believes Brazil should open the Amazon up to business interests, to allow mining, agricultural and logging companies to exploit its natural resources.

Bolsonaro said on Thursday the government lacks the resources to fight the wildfires. He also said that while he could not prove that non-governmental groups were lighting the fires, they were “the most likely suspects.”

Federal prosecutors in Brazil said they were investigating a spike in deforestation and wildfires raging in the Amazon state of Pará to determine whether there has been reduced monitoring and enforcement of environmental protections.

Climate news straight to your inbox? Sign up here

Prosecutors said they would look into an ad that they said was published in a local newspaper encouraging farmers to participate in a “Fire Day,” in which they would burn large areas of forest “to show Bolsonaro their willingness to work.”

The president also said in a Facebook broadcast that countries giving money to preserve the Amazon do it to “interfere with our sovereignty,” and not for charity.

Earlier this month Norway and Germany suspended funding for projects to curb deforestation in Brazil after becoming alarmed by rising deforestation under Bolsonaro.

Indigenous groups who live in the Amazon rainforest and depend on it for survival said the wildfires in Brazil and eastern Bolivia were a “tragedy.”

Indigenous leaders call for Arctic cooperation against wildfires

“The lack of capacity of these governments and their lack of political will has caused the serious environmental tragedy that for weeks, and without precedent, already shows irreversible environmental damage,” indigenous Amazon organizations said.

Kumi Naidoo, secretary general of rights group Amnesty International, said responsibility to stop the wildfires “lies squarely” with Brazil’s government, which “must change their disastrous policy of opening up the rainforest for destruction.”

The post Ireland threatens to block Mercosur trade deal unless Brazil protects Amazon appeared first on Climate Home News.

The surge marks an 83% increase over the same period of 2018, the agency said on Tuesday, and is the highest since records began in 2013.

Since Thursday, INPE said satellite images spotted 9,507 new forest fires in the country, mostly in the Amazon basin, home to the world’s largest tropical forest seen as vital to countering global warming.

Images show the northernmost state of Roraima covered in dark smoke. Amazonas declared an emergency in the south of the state and in its capital Manaus on 9 August. Acre, on the border with Peru, has been on environmental alert since Friday due to the fires.

Wildfires have increased in Mato Grosso and Para, two states where Brazil’s agricultural frontier has pushed into the Amazon basin and spurred deforestation. Wildfires are common in the dry season, but are also deliberately set by farmers illegally deforesting land for cattle ranching.

Indigenous leaders call for Arctic cooperation against wildfires

The unprecedented surge in wildfires has occurred since Bolsonaro took office in January vowing to develop the Amazon region for farming and mining, ignoring international concern over increased deforestation.

Asked about the spread of uncontrolled fires, Bolsonaro brushed off criticism, saying it was the time of the year of the “queimada” or burn, when farmers use fire to clear land.

“I used to be called Captain Chainsaw. Now I am Nero, setting the Amazon aflame. But it is the season of the queimada,” he told reporters.

Space agency INPE, however, said the large number of wildfires could not be attributed to the dry season or natural phenomena alone.

“There is nothing abnormal about the climate this year or the rainfall in the Amazon region, which is just a little below average,” said INPE researcher Alberto Setzer.

Climate news straight to your inbox? Sign up here

People frequently blame the dry season for the wildfires in the Amazon, but that is not quite accurate, he said.

“The dry season creates the favorable conditions for the use and spread of fire, but starting a fire is the work of humans, either deliberately or by accident,” Setzer said.

Bolsonaro recently fired the director of INPE after he criticized agency statistics showing an increase in deforestation in Brazil, saying they were inaccurate.

“I am waiting for the next set of numbers, that will not be made-up numbers. If they are alarming, I will take notice of them in front of you,” he told reporters.

The post Record 72,000 forest fires detected in Brazil this year appeared first on Climate Home News.

Brazil is home to more than 60 percent of the Amazon forest, which is being cleared at an increasing rate to create more cropland.

The Amazon is vital to the exchange of oxygen for carbon dioxide in the atmosphere – a check on global warming – but concern about the forest has grown since Bolsonaro took office in January.

“They can use this money as they see fit. Brazil doesn’t need it,” Bolsonaro, a far-right populist, told journalists in Brasilia.

His comments came after Germany on Saturday said it would block payment of €35 million ($40 million) to Brazil for forest conservation and biodiversity programs until the Amazon’s rate of decline attained encouraging levels once again.

Climate news straight to your inbox? Sign up here

Brazil’s National Institute for Space Research (INPE) said on Tuesday that roughly 2,254 square kilometres of the Amazon were cleared in July, a spike of 278% from a year earlier.

“Brazilian government policies in the Amazon raise doubts about continued, sustained declines in the rate of deforestation,” German Environment Minister Svenja Schulze told the television news show Tagesspiegel.

From 2008 until this year, Berlin paid 95 million euros in support of various environmental protection programs in Brazil.

Germany nonetheless plans to continue supporting the Amazon Fund, a forest preservation initiative created in 2008.

Norway, which has contributed the most to the fund, has threatened to withdraw, and said last year that payments to Brazil would be cut in half and might be eliminated altogether.

Analysis: Nine solutions to the food-forests-fuel trilemma

Asked Sunday by a reporter about Brazil’s image abroad, Bolsonaro replied with another provocation.

“You think that the big countries are interested in Brazil’s image, or do they want to appropriate Brazil?” he said.

A week before the INPE numbers were released, the institute’s chief Ricardo Galvao was fired, and Environment Minister Ricardo Salles charged that INPE published its data in a way that satisfied “sensationalist interpretations” aimed at getting “more donations from foreign NGOs”.

Bolsonaro has been accused of favoring his supporters in the logging, mining and farming sectors. He has pledged to allow more farming and logging in the Amazon, and to grant more licenses to the mining industry.

The post Bolsonaro shrugs off German aid cuts, as deforestation surges appeared first on Climate Home News.

Since then, many have been exterminated and seen their populations reduced through murder, torture, enslavement, imported diseases, and the theft of their lands.

As a result, Brazil’s indigenous population today stands at around 850,000.

The first 100 days of Jair Bolsonaro’s presidency are just the latest chapter in this long war of attrition.

Since Bolsonaro took office on 1 January, armed invaders have descended on indigenous peoples’ lands, as protected territories have come under attack from land grabbers.

In fact, this surge of incursions began even before he  assumed the presidency, with the Indigenous Missionary Council (CIMI)reporting a 150% increase in land invasions following Bolsonaro’s victory in the presidential election last October.

Core constituency

Today, 45% of rural Brazil is owned by less has 1% of land owners. It is as if the country has returned to colonial times: only now the conquest is at the hands of the agribusiness sector.

It is this sector – which is responsible for 23% of Brazil’s GDP – that helped propel Bolsonaro to power.

Within hours of taking office, he began attacking the country’s environmental safeguards by issuing an executive order transferring responsibility for setting indigenous land boundaries from the national Indian foundation, FUNAI, to the agriculture ministry.

This was followed by a barrage of measures and announcements with the same aim: advancing the interests of the agribusiness sector, and eroding the strength of those who stand in the way of them bulldozing the country’s precious rainforests and savannahs.

In the first month of his presidency, deforestation in the Amazon reportedly rose 54% on the same month in the previous year.

Europe’s complicity

But it is not just Bolsonaro and the agribusiness sector who bear responsibility for this: those trading in and consuming agricultural goods which have led to human rights violations, or which has been produced on land taken from indigenous communities, cannot simply turn a blind eye to it.

The EU and Brazil share deep economic ties.

EU countries combined are Brazil’s largest source of foreign direct investment, and the EU is Brazil’s second largest trading partner,accounting for 18.3% of its trade.

The EU is a huge market for Brazilian agricultural exports, in particular, soya and beef – which are major causes of land rights abuses and deforestation in Brazil. In 2017 Brazil accounted for or 42% of EU beef imports, and historically soy products accounted for a third of Brazilian agricultural exports to the EU.

What’s more, the EU is also in the throes of negotiating a comprehensive free trade deal with the so-called Mercosur trading bloc, of which Brazil is the largest and most powerful member.

Given all this, the EU is well placed to exert the kind of demand-side financial pressures that could act as a brake on Bolsonaro. As one commentator put it:  “For a country that has become an agricultural superpower, exporting massive amounts of soybeans and beef, the loss of even a small part of these markets translates to millions [of dollars].”

With the help of Articulação dos Povos Indígenas do Brasil (APIB), indigenous peoples in Brazil are now calling for a boycott of companies which source their material from areas which are riven by conflict.

At the European level, the EU can help stop Brazil’s unfolding calamity by ensuring that neither EU finance, nor products placed in the EU market have violated human rights or caused deforestation. This can be done by passing new laws requiring companies to trace their supply chains fully and making it mandatory for them to know the history of any agricultural commodity they import.

Finally, the Mercosur deal’s negotiators cannot be oblivious to events in Brazil: quite simply, the agreement should not be signed without binding guarantees respecting indigenous peoples’ land rights.

Failure to act will see the damage and see more devastation increase: as cattle ranchers and soy producers sweep through the Amazon, Mato Grosso, Mato Grosso do Sul and elsewhere, seizing land, burning forests and polluting rivers.

Indigenous peoples, who a body of evidence shows are the best guardians of their forests, have resisted the pressures on them for centuries. It is up to the EU – and all those trading in goods which have caused environmental and social damage – to support them.

Sonia Guajajara is coordinator of Articulação dos Povos Indígenas do Brasil (Articulation of Indigenous People of Brazil) (APIB), an organisation representing more than 300 Brazilian indigenous ethnic groups. In 2018 she became the first indigenous woman to run for federal executive office in Brazil, as a vice presidential candidate for the Socialism and Liberty Party.

Nicole Polsterer is a campaigner for Fern, a Brussels-based forests and rights NGO.

Read Fern’s briefing 100 Days of Bolsonaro – Ending the EU’s role in the assault on the Amazon.

The post EU must back indigenous people against Bolsonaro’s attacks appeared first on Climate Home News.

In an unpredictable race, the right-wing Bolsonaro is polling second behind Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, the socialist former president. But “Lula” is in jail for corruption and likely to be disqualified by the courts, leaving a scattered field.

At his campaign launch last month and in subsequent interviews, Bolsonaro said he would join Donald Trump’s US and withdraw from the Paris pact.

That stance drew ire from UN environment chief Erik Solheim. Action on climate change would create “healthier and wealthier” economies, he told Climate Home News.

“A rejection of the Paris Agreement is a rejection of science and fact,” Solheim said. “It’s also a false promise, because politicians who present climate action as a cost to society have got it all wrong.”

Last week, Brazil’s government released a statement declaring the country had met its 2020 forest emissions target three years early.

“The policy message is that we can and should remain in the Paris Agreement (because) it is possible to effectively implement the commitments that have been made,” Thiago Mendes, secretary of climate change in the Environment Ministry, told Reuters.

More than ever, the world needs great climate coverage

Become a CHN patron for as little as $7 per month to help us keep bringing you the most in-depth climate politics news from around the world.

We have set up a Patreon account. It’s a simple, safe and easy way for you to become part of a community that will secure and guide our future.

Thank you!

The withdrawal of such an important developing country, home to the world’s largest rainforest, would deal a blow to international climate cooperation. While it has not been confirmed, Brazil was expected to host the 2019 UN climate summit.

But Brazilian experts downplayed the likelihood of Bolsonaro carrying out his threat.

Unlike in the US, Brazil ratified the Paris Agreement through its congress, said André Guimarães, head of the Amazon Environmental Research Institute (Ipam).

“Honestly, I think that there is very little chance that [a withdrawal] happens,” he said. “My guess is that even if Bolsonaro wins and wants to change the deal, it will not be an easy task.”

Citing research showing that Amazon deforestation could hit rainfall and therefore agriculture, Guimarães said climate action was in the national interest. “Stopping deforestation is good business for Brazil, not just for environmentalists.”

Brazil’s top environmental enforcer: ‘it’s war in the Amazon’

Bolsonaro has not elaborated on why he opposes the Paris Agreement, but some clues can be found in his social media activity.

Last August, Bolsonaro shared an interview with Ricardo Felicio, a geographer and prominent climate denier who disputes the basic physics of the greenhouse effect.

AQUECIMENTO GLOBAL: @moura_101 entrevista o Professor Ricardo Felício! Vale a pena conferir: https://t.co/BcJShFhj4L

— Jair Bolsonaro (@jairbolsonaro) August 14, 2017

The day after Trump announced his intention to quit the Paris deal, Bolsonoro shared an article defending the decision entitled “the greenhouse fables”.

AS FÁBULAS DE ESTUFA (via @Flavio_Quintela ). https://t.co/cEJvsqvYWZ

— Jair Bolsonaro (@jairbolsonaro) June 2, 2017

Bolsonaro’s three eldest sons, all elected officials, have been more outspoken on the issue.

Eduardo, a federal representative from the state of São Paulo, posted a homemade video in January characterising the Paris deal as a globalist conspiracy. “It doesn’t make any sense,” he told viewers from a snowy part of the US.

A photograph, reportedly taken last week, shows Eduardo meeting former Trump adviser and far-right propagandist Steve Bannon in New York. Bannon was one of the strongest White House advocates for the US to withdraw from the deal.

Photo of Eduardo Bolsonaro – son of Brazil’s far-right presidential candidate Jair Bolsonaro – with Steve Bannon, taken this past weekend in New York pic.twitter.com/vdWDzJp5Np

— Bruce Douglas (@bruceecurb) August 6, 2018

Carlos, a city councillor in Rio de Janeiro, blamed the “leftist agenda” for climate change getting media coverage in a 2016 tweet. He asserted – against all evidence – that the world was cooling.

Flavio, a federal representative in Rio, has called global warming a “fraud”.

It comes as Brazil faces international pressure to tackle an up-tick in deforestation, particularly from Norway, which supports forest protection efforts through the Amazon Fund. Last year, Norway more than halved its annual payment to $35 million, citing poor results.

In 2016 and 2017, Brazil recorded its highest rates of tree clearance this century. NGO Imazon’s monthly data showed a further spike in June, Mongabay reports.

Michel Temer’s administration has courted the beef lobby, rolling back forest protections to allow the expansion of cattle ranches, soy plantations and mines.

Ten scientists wrote in a letter to the journal Nature Climate Change last month that such moves jeopardised Brazil’s climate goals. “The abandonment of deforestation control policies and the political support for predatory agricultural practices make it impossible to meet targets consistent with Brazil’s contribution to a 2C world,” they said.

Climate Action Tracker notes the 2020 target, which the government claimed as an early win, was in fact already mostly achieved in 2012, having been weakened by artificially inflating the “business as usual” baseline.

The outlook for meeting the tougher 2030 targets is poor based on current trends, according to analyst Paola Parra: “It is not looking great for deforestation for the future.”

Ipam’s Guimarães agreed. “It is very easy to play with numbers,” he said. “At some point in the future, the challenge for Brazil is to stop deforestation.”

Climate Home News is one of the world’s most trusted independent sources of climate politics news. Sign up for our newsletter.

Bruno Toledo contributed research to this article

Republish this article

The post Brazil: Bolsonaro threatens to quit Paris climate deal appeared first on Climate Home News.