During last year’s United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP26) in Glasgow, Brazil gave off some mixed signals about the environment. While 25-year-old indigenous activist Txai Suruí hushed crowds by saying that “the Earth is speaking, and it’s telling us there’s no more time,” the governor of northern Brazilian state Rondônia asked the global community to cut Amazon deforesters some slack.
“It is wrong to treat producers, ranchers, and loggers as villains,” said Marcos Rocha, during a conference. “The right thing to do is a transition, and not throttle our people, who suffer every day.”
That Mr. Rocha and Txai Suruí both hail from Rondônia state exemplifies just how much Brazil is struggling to find a balanced solution to the Amazon question, at what is a critical moment for the biome. After a decade of decreasing numbers in forest degradation, the deforestation curve has been going up since 2012 — reaching a 15-year high of 13,235 square kilometers destroyed last year, roughly the size of Connecticut.
Now it is clear that the Amazon is approaching a “tipping point” of sorts.
Beyond forest destruction itself, more than three-quarters of the biome is losing its capacity for regeneration. The most catastrophic projections suggest the forest may turn into a savanna in just a few decades’ time.
Meanwhile, oversight mechanisms have been left underfunded and under attack from the federal government, and those who profit from environmental crimes no longer fear retribution from the State.
Is Bolsonaro’s Amazon policy popular?
The Amazon is as diverse as the people who call the forest region home. For many of them, however, the laissez-faire environmental policy pursued by far-right President Jair Bolsonaro suits them perfectly. The Brazilian head of state has drawn widespread international criticism for wild claims that the country is not destroying the forest, that indigenous groups should not be granted “another inch” of protected land, and that wildcat gold mining in the...
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