Widely criticized, Brazil’s Environment Minister is loosening forest controls

Back on August 6, 2020, the Brazilian Environment Institute (Ibama) lodged a request with the Air Force for aerial backup in an operation against environmental crimes. The plan was to fly indigenous leaders from the northern state of Pará to the capital, Brasília, where they would meet with Environment Minister Ricardo Salles to discuss measures to fight deforestation and foster sustainable growth in the Amazon basin. 

But the operation was canceled, and Air Forces planes were instead used to transport illegal wildcat miners, with whom Mr. Salles conversed behind closed doors.

This was not the first time that the Environment Minister would prioritize those accused of destroying forests to the detriment of the people who live in them — nor would it be the last. Environmentalists across the globe call him a threat to the global struggle to prevent the climate emergency from worsening, and have called for his ousting.

They shouldn’t hold their breath. Mr. Salles is only pushing through an agenda endorsed in full by President Jair Bolsonaro. Moreover, Salles’ proximity to the president’s family appears to make him ironclad within the cabinet, regardless of his actions.

Back in January, Mr. Salles took an Air Force plane to visit the area where authorities were carrying out the largest bust of illegal timber in the history of the Amazon. In a video featuring immense felled trees behind him, Mr. Salles attacked law enforcement agents and defended the targets of the operation. Last week, Federal Police presented charges of obstruction of justice, criminal association, and influence peddling against Mr. Salles, accusing him of “directly sponsoring the private and illegitimate interests of loggers under investigation.”

The government’s reaction was to swap out the Federal Police superintendent who presented the charges.

Though the alliance between Messrs. Bolsonaro and Salles is not a natural one – Salles being of a supposedly more libertarian bent –, their bond has proven solid and the Environment Minister...