The biggest country in Latin America is one of the least committed to reducing its CO2 emissions and battling climate change.
In April 2021, deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon broke global records. With a total of 580 square kilometers of the rainforest lost in just one month, the vast country hit a new high, according to the Real-Time Amazon Deforestation Detection System (DETER, by its Spanish acronym). In 2020, the total number was an appalling 10,851 square kilometers deforested.
That same month, during the Leaders' Summit on Climate led by US president Joe Biden, Jair Bolsonaro, Brazil’s far-Right president, committed to taking serious steps towards eradicating deforestation in his country by 2030. However, since he came to power at the start of 2019, the devastation of the Amazonian jungle has reached its worst-ever heights, and his environmental politics have been widely criticised. He defends the exploitation of natural resources in the Amazonian region, even in Indigenous reserves, and has made it easier for those who attack the environment directly, such as mining companies and illegal wood traders, to do so.
In fact, in August 2019, openDemocracy revealed that Bolsonaro had secret plans to facilitate the logging of the Amazon by whipping up a hate campaign against the Indigenous communities that live in and protect it.
It’s as a result of all of this that Bolsonaro has been described by Rolling Stone magazine as “The world’s most dangerous climate denier.”
With this in mind, it came as a big surprise that on 19 October, Bolsonaro and the Colombian president, Ivan Duque, allied during the latter’s visit to Brazil, vowing to attend COP 26, the UN’s climate conference in Scotland that starts on October 31, together, united by one goal: defending the Amazon.
“We will arrive in Glasgow together to tackle a very important and dear issue for us: our dear, rich and loved Amazon region,” Bolsonaro said after a meeting with Duque in the Planalto presidential palace in Brasilia, the capital of Brazil.
Bolsonaro also said he wants to work towards an efficient energy transition, emissions reduction, and net-zero. He also reaffirmed that, by 2030, there will be no deforestation in Brazil.
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