Jer Bolsonaro welcomes passengers to his “path of development” by smiling down from the promotional billboards at the entrance to the Amazon checkpoint.
But 20 months into Bolsonaro’s presidency – and a year after the catastrophic outbreak of the Amazon fire – sparked global outrage – and the fire turned again, and many fear that Brazil’s leader is leading his country to environmental disaster.
During a two-hour surveillance flight into the sky around Novo Progresso, the Guardian spotted a huge column of white and gray smoke from the supposedly protected forests below.
Elsewhere, illegal goldmines can be seen in the Bau indigenous area – muddy pools and chaotic tapestries of makeshift camps where there was once an ancient forest. Newly felled deciduous and deciduous trees were visible inside the Erie Forest Reserve.
“Amazon is condemned for destruction,” frustrated a former top official of Brazil’s proud environmental agency, Ibama, accusing far-right people of overseeing the massive “demolition” of protection efforts.
“There will be no confrontation under this government [of rainforest destruction], ”The former officer said. “The future looks bleak.”
Under pressure from foreign investors, governments and Brazilian businessmen to avoid a repeat of last year’s scandal – when world leaders such as Leonardo DiCaprio and Emmanuel Macron condemned Bolsonaro’s treatment on Amazon – the Brazilian government is taking aggressive action.
“The story that Amazon is moving in flames is false,” Bolsonaro insisted earlier this month, despite evidence to the contrary.
Thousands of troops are believed to have been deployed to the Amazon in May as part of a military mission designed to curb environmental crime – but some claims are making matters worse.
In July, as pressure from international investors intensified, Brazil announced a four-month ban on burning, designed to reassure the world.
But a satellite image has been collected by Brazil’s own space agency, InPay, indicating that those efforts have been short-lived. In August Gust found more than 7,600 fires in the Amazonas – one of nine states where the Brazilian Amazon created – the highest number since 1998 and nearly 1,000 more than last year. On Tuesday, Impe announced that it had detected more than 29,307 fires in the entire Amazon region in August.
Greenpeace calculated that despite military mobility and burning restrictions, there was only an 8% reduction in fires between July and mid-August compared to July.
“We are witnessing last year’s tragedy for ourselves,” said Remulo Batista, a Greenpeace campaigner in Manama, the capital of the Amazonas.
Shocking scenes of destruction were also witnessed during a recent surveillance flight over four Amazon states – Amazonas, Mato Grosso, Rondenia and Pierre-Batista.
“We saw the path of Gaucher, the forests of burning forests, the forest areas that were burning. And it was clear that there was no one sitting at home in the forest below us [because of coronavirus], ”He said.
“Everyone – illegal loggers, land grabbers, illegal miners – they are all running and even more than usual, safe in the knowledge that government inspections have been withdrawn due to the epidemic.”
“There has been a huge increase in illegal mining and logging activities in the last two years,” said a monitoring official at the indigenous NGO Institutes Kabu, which hosts the Guardian’s single-engine flight in Pere State. The lack of surveillance operations by Obama and the federal police in the region has encouraged environmental crimes in indigenous regions. “
Bep Proti Macrognoti Ray, a leader for indigenous Kayapi people, said his communities were paying a heavy price for the government’s anti-environmental stance.
“What Bolsonaro’s development means is the destruction within our reserves,” said Bep Prote, a week-long blockade of the Amazon Highway recently cut off by Nozo Progressives in search of protection.
He called for immediate action to monitor and protect the region’s forests and wildlife: “It is the forests and rivers that I feed myself on.”
The chairman said Amazon is currently facing two development patterns: “development of destruction” and sustainable “construction and development of knowledge”.
Environmentalists are unaware of which model Bolsonaro – which took office in January 2019, promised to open up Amazon and its indigenous reserves for development – is pursuing.
“In Brazil, we are facing the worst moment in more than 30 years. And unfortunately it was fully expected because the president thanked him for his anti-environmental rhetoric – and now he is living up to that promise, “said Carlos Ritt, a Brazilian environmentalist working at the Institute for Advanced Sustainability Studies in Germany.
“Emotion is a desolation,” Rittle said, “2020 is going to be a terrible year.”
Batista likened Bolsonaro’s approach to a wildfire and his coronavirus rejection operation, which has now claimed the lives of more than 120,000 Brazilians. Those on the far right rejected satellite imagery and science and hoped to give the world an “air of normalcy”, as it did with the Covid-19. “Unfortunately, this is not easy.”
A former Obama official was similarly pessimistic, claiming that his operations were “completely paralyzed” and that Brazil’s environmental policies were licking. The organization, cut off over the years, had only six helicopters for Amazon’s 2.1-square-meter police force, which it planned to take out of service. “If you tell me, to fight deforestation, you’ll need at least 12.”
Last week, Brazil’s environment minister announced that anti-deforestation operations were to be halted, although this was reversed after the aggression.
Rittle’s latest fire – which is expected to continue until October – is the result of “the fate of a tragedy” and “a government not fully committed to the environment.”
“Under Bolsonaro, Brazil is probably becoming the biggest global enemy of the environment. It is very sad to see that, ”he said. “A small number of people get very rich from this – and we all lose.”
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