According to experts, Jair Bolsonaro's anti-environmental speech, coupled with the dismantling of oversight bodies, prompted a clearing of the forest in 2019.
As published by the Climate Observatory, a coalition of dozens of environmental conservation organizations in Brazil, "this is a direct result of Bolsonaro's strategy of dismantling the Ministry of Environment, demobilizing enforcement, shelving plans. to combat deforestation of previous governments and to empower environmental criminals in his speech, and the president himself has proudly stated that he had sent his anti-environment minister, Ricardo Salles, 'to put the scythe into the IBAMA Renewable Natural Resources] '.Salles obeyed."
According to data from Prodes 2019 (Satellite Legal Amazon Deforestation Monitoring Project), released by Inpe (National Institute for Space Research), the deforested area in the Amazon was 9,762 km² between August 2018 and July 2019, the highest since 2008. This figure represents a 29.5% increase over the same period last year (August 2017 to July 2018), when deforestation was 7,536 km².
This increase represents the highest rate since 2008 and also the biggest jump from year to year in the last 22 years. For scientists like Carlos Nobre, this deforestation should transform part of the Amazon territory into an impoverished savanna. Obviously, this is very serious, which should affect the climate in the region and reduce, due to the change in the country's rainfall cycle, the capacity of Brazilian agricultural production. Deforestation is horrible for the environment and also bad for business.
This week, during a talk at the Wilson Center Brazil Institute in Washington, Brazil's agriculture minister, Tereza Cristina, heard several questions about problems in the Amazon at meetings with officials and investors. Therefore, the risk of an increase in the boycott of Brazilian products is getting bigger.
