New hope for Amazon after years of destruction

Brazilian officials fighting to protect the Amazon have hailed Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva’s presidential election victory as a lifeline for a rainforest exploited with impunity.

Brazilian president-elect Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva. Picture: AFP

Brazilian officials fighting to protect the Amazon have hailed Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva’s presidential election victory as a lifeline for a rainforest exploited with impunity under his predecessor.

Jair Bolsonaro’s gutting of ­environmental agencies and dismissive rhetoric allowed lax enforcement against logging and illegal mining, resulting in deforestation rates leaping to a 15-year high last year.

Worried by the prospect of a Lula clampdown, individuals and organised crime groups have rushed to pull down trees, burn them and replace forest with farms, mines and other developments. Satellite data showed ­deforestation jumped in September, with an area nearly twice the size of New York City cleared, a ­record size for the month.

Lula’s win is a relief for officials taking enforcement against illegal deforestation, which ranges from destroying loggers’ vehicles to issuing fines. Mr Bolsonaro boasted that fines issued by the federal environment agency had fallen 80 per cent under his leadership.

Officials said that turning around efforts on the ground would take more than just criminals again fearing the threat of enforcement. “We need more personnel, better IT, better equipment. We haven’t had a rise in five years,” one said.

Marcos Amend, an environmental economist at the Wildlife Conservation Society, said: “We’re going to have to deal with inertia. There’s a whole culture of impunity built up under Bolsonaro.” For example, shifting the thousands of illegal miners who have moved into the lands of the Yanomami tribe in the Amazon in recent years would be difficult.

In Manaus, Brazilian flags indicating support for Mr Bolsonaro adorn utes and balconies. He won here in the first round of the election early last month. Yet people in this city of two million were still disappointed at how little preservation of the surrounding forest, an ecosystem brimming with biodiversity and vital for tackling ­climate change, featured in the election campaign.

Morale and resources are low among those tasked with protecting indigenous people. An official at the National Indian Foundation, speaking anonymously, said the agency was stretched thin, using a team of fewer than two dozen staff to stop people entering an area the size of Portugal.

“I think it’s going to take time (to turn things around),” the official said, adding: “It’s not just a matter for Lula’s administration. The rich European countries and North America need to understand poverty cannot be acceptable, it’s what makes logging possible. It’s not a burden for Brazil only.”

Lula’s win has changed the international dynamic. The Bolsonaro administration attacked an international fund that spent more than $US1bn supporting civil society projects to conserve the fund, leading donors including Germany and Norway to suspend payments. However, those countries are expected to resume ­financing the Amazon Fund.

One of the first signs of change may come in Egypt this month at the COP27 climate conference. Lula’s campaign team has been talking with the governments of other deforestation hot spots, the Democratic Republic of Congo and Indonesia, about using the conference to announce a new forest preservation alliance where richer countries pay for carbon credits to keep forest standing.

Though Lula was no great environmentalist when last in power – he approved the controversial Belo Monte dam in the Amazon – deforestation did drop from 21,000sq km in 2002 to 7000sq km by 2010, his final year as president.

The Times