"This Is As Close To Extortion As Brazilian Foreign Policy Has Come Since World War II"
EDIT
There’s also a specific reason to distrust that Bolsonaro is serious about changing course: His environment minister, Ricardo Salles, still has a job. Salles has distinguished himself as one of the savvier members of the carnival of horrors that has been Bolsonaro’s Cabinet, but he has shown himself to be an anti-conservation zealot. Before Bolsonaro’s election, Salles was environment minister for the state of São Paulo. In that role, he was found guilty of favoring private business interests at the expense of environmental safeguards (despite overwhelming evidence, Salles’s conviction was overturned last month). In 2019, as massive swathes of the Amazon went up in smoke, Salles posited that the best way to protect the rain forest is to “monetize” it. Most recently, the head of Brazil’s Federal Police in the state of Amazonas accused Salles of interfering in an investigation into illegally harvested timber seized late last year, valued at over $20 million. In an attempt to signal a new foreign policy direction in the wake of Biden’s election, Bolsonaro recently fired his conspiracy-minded foreign minister. Salles’s endurance in Brazil’s top environmental position speaks volumes about the government’s real commitments.
Salles has said new international aid would allow the government to expand the presence of security forces across the Amazon, but it is not clear this would reduce the problem of fraud and corruption in logging and land grabbing. A damning new report by Xingu+, a network of Indigenous activist groups and civil society organizations, found that deforestation under Bolsonaro is spreading in the Xingu river basin, a critically important part of the rain forest. “The advance of deforestation, land grabbing and illegal mining has placed the Apyterewa, Cachoeira Seca, Ituna Itatá and Trincheira Bacajá Indigenous Lands at the top of the ranking of the most deforested in the Amazon in 2020,” the report, based on near real-time deforestation radar monitoring, lamented. The people who live in the Xingu river basin—an area nearly the size of France—are facing an onslaught of rapacious economic forces the Bolsonaro government has to date shown no interest in restraining.
In fact, the president has a history of blaming Amazon fires on the Indigenous people who live in the rain forest rather than his allies in agribusiness, whom he openly supports in a campaign to develop the Amazon against Indigenous wishes and land rights. That’s despite a recent study showing that Latin America’s Indigenous peoples, when given full property rights over their lands, are hands-down the best stewards of the rain forest. They are understandably wary of state security forces in their vicinity.
Brazil and the international community are not on the same page when it comes to establishing a standard for foreign assistance. Salles essentially wants to be paid to crack down on deforestation, whereas other countries want to see results before committing any more funds. This is a tricky impasse. The president seems to think he is in a position to negotiate, but it is not clear what leverage he possesses other than letting the hostage—the Amazon rain forest—die. This is as close to extortion as Brazilian foreign policy has come since World War II, when it flirted with the Axis to scare Washington into offering a massive aid package. Thinking he can dictate favorable terms at this late hour of his disastrous administration is another of Bolsonaro’s many delusions.
EDIT
https://newrepublic.com/article/162152/bolsonaro-doesnt-want-save-amazon-just-wants-extort-countries-do
= new reply since forum marked as read
