Dangerous man, dangerous deals
Greenpeace | 24 January 2022
Dangerous man, dangerous deals
Introduction
The EU-Mercosur trade agreement would have fatal consequences for the planet and people and any deal that rewards Bolsonaro’s policies must not materialize. Harmful trade agreements like EU-Mercosur undermine the EU’s duty to address its own planetary footprint. Closer trade relations or carbon credit trading with the government of Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro reward an agenda that is fervently anti-human rights and anti-environment.
Brazilian officials and agribusiness representatives, in the context of trade and environmental negotiations, have painted a distorted view of the real consequences of Bolsonaro’s agenda. Recently at COP26 in Glasgow – as the Brazilian delegation announced misleading climate commitments1 – the government delayed the release of annual deforestation numbers that revealed a deforestation rate increase of nearly 22 percent. Even more concerning, the same Brazilian lawmakers who attended the COP, upon returning to Brazil, began to rush radical anti-environmental legislation that would make deforestation worse by either rewarding illegal land grabbing, threatening Indigenous Peoples’ lands, or ending participatory environmental licensing.
Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro’s policies are sacrificing communities and natural ecosystems necessary to sustain life on the planet. In just three years, his agenda has yielded dramatic degradation of nature, communities, and biodiversity. This report highlights the many dimensions of his agenda’s consequences. Under Bolsonaro Amazon deforestation has increased by 75.6 percent and fire hotspots alerts grew by 24 percent. Greenhouse gas emissions in Brazil increased 9.5 percent since Bolsonaro took office. In large part these increases can be attributed to his administration systematically dismantling policies and enforcement practices that protect the environment and the climate. The rights of Indigenous Peoples have been undermined as a result of Bolsonaro’s Agenda. The number of land conflicts in Brazil, one of the most dangerous geographies in the Western Hemisphere, have increased by 40 percent. Civil rights and civil society organisations are under increasing threats as well, including non-governmental organisations (NGOs). In the midst of the disastrous fires in the Amazon in 2019, Bolsonaro blamed NGOs for having lit them.
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