Bold Bolsonaro Leadership: Invite Global Corporations To Manage Protected Amazon Parks & Reserves

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In February 2021, the administration of Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro announced the first stage of its “Adopt-a-Park” program, in which 132 of the federal government’s protected areas, all in the Amazon, are being offered up for private companies to “adopt.” The plan is to eventually extend the program to all federally protected areas across the country. The total area currently up for adoption covers 644,000 square kilometers (250,000 square miles), an eighth of the Amazon Basin (a region known officially as Amazônia Legal). The largest preserve offered up for adoption is Montanhas Tumucumaque in Amapá state, encompassing 38,000 km2 (14,670 mi2), but to date no company has shown interest in that park.

So far, the program is off to a lackluster start, with only eight protected areas attracting interest from private companies, including five from Brazil and three transnationals — French grocery chain Carrefour, and beverage companies Coca-Cola of the U.S. and Heineken of the Netherlands — with their predicted outlay totaling just over $1million. If all the protected areas in the Amazon are adopted, the program could result in the private sector providing goods and services equivalent to 3.2 billion reais ($600 million) annually to conservation coffers. That’s a sizeable contribution, but the success of the program depends on how the resources are used and where, say environmentalists who have little trust in the Bolsonaro administration due to its record of extreme anti-environmental policies.

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One fundamental aspect of Adopt-a-Park, in particular, is provoking fierce debate in Brazil. The government isn’t only offering national parks up for adoption — large areas where human occupation is banned — but also all the other types of protected areas in Brazil, many of which have very complex management plans. Most controversially, these include extractive reserves, or RESEX, which were created to allow traditional communities of rubber tappers, Brazil nut collectors, and many other “extractivist” groups to carry on with their traditional ways of life and livelihoods. The government’s decision in 1990 to create the country’s first extractive reserve was the result of a long struggle by rubber tappers, led by their internationally renowned leader, Chico Mendes, murdered by a cattle rancher in December 1988.

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A large group of NGOs and social movements shared these concerns in a letter published in March, writing: “It seems clear to us that this program is a way of officially announcing that Brazil is for sale. The program reflects the intention of the Brazilian government to dismantle environmental policies and to promote the privatization and financialization of nature.” The internationally respected Brazilian NGO coalition, Observatório do Clima, issued a press release in which it denounced Adopt-a-Park in unusually vehement language, calling it “ecocide.” Observatório do Clima warns that one of the first casualties will be the federal government’s Chico Mendes Biodiversity and Conservation Institute (ICMBio), which currently administers the nation’s protected areas. It contends that ICMBio, long targeted by the Bolsonaro government with huge budget cuts, will be shut down.

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https://news.mongabay.com/2021/06/brazil-adopt-a-park-program-may-negatively-impact-traditional-peoples/

[marble falls]

1. What a joke. The corporations are already administering the parks. That's the fucking problem.