When it comes to the environment, Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro believes he is spearheading a settling of accounts.
“Brazil owes nothing to the world with regard to environmental preservation”, he argued during a visit to Chile soon after Brazil’s decision to refuse an invitation to host COP25, the main United Nations summit for negotiating climate change. “We are concerned with development”.
But outside the government, environmentalists, officials at the Ministry of the Environment, and other observers believe that the president is relinquishing the only area in which Brazil has been a global leader.
