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