Environmental officials in Brazil have been confined to their offices for almost half a year in protest to demand labor improvements. On January 1 they stopped outdoor work. That means no more on-site inspections, seizure of property or confiscation of material used in illicit activities. Although their mobilization already has an environmental and economic impact, the Government of Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva broke off negotiations at the beginning of the month because it considers it impossible to satisfy all demands. They reply that, under current conditions, the government’s ambitious environmental goals will hardly be met and they debate hardening their stance and launching a full-fledged strike. A senior Petrobras official estimated in May that, if the strike continues, it could mean the loss of 2% of annual oil production, that is, more than 50,000 barrels per day.
Officials from the Ministry of the Environment and organizations such as Ibama (the environmental protection agency) or the Chico Mendes Institute (ICMbio, for biodiversity), are, along with the teaching staff of federal universities, the spearhead of some employees publics demanding job improvements after the salary freeze of the Bolsonaro years.
The mobilization places President Lula in a complicated position. On the one hand, no one is unaware that he cemented his political career as a union leader and organizer of labor strikes—these days he has reiterated his respect for those who exercise that democratic right—but the public deficit is increasing and the head of the Government is beginning to be irritated with the protests.
The president announced, last week, a million-dollar investment in higher education and new campuses in a commitment that was considered an attempt to neutralize a strike that has lasted for many weeks at dozens of universities.
Instead, negotiations with representatives of environmental officials have broken down. This is a critical body of public employees in two aspects: they are in charge of implementing environmental policy, a central issue in the Lula Government’s foreign policy and one of the issues that he placed as a priority in his electoral campaign. They are also essential for granting environmental licenses in a central sector of the economy such as oil and gas.
That at the end of 2023 the Lula Government granted juicy salary increases to several police forces – a sector mostly in tune with Bolsonarism – and not to groups that, in principle, are more related to it, irritated them greatly.
The Minister of the Environment, Marina Silva, is in the middle of the fight. “Officials are fundamental and strategic to fight against deforestation, evaluate environmental licenses and protect conservation units,” Silva stressed last week during a visit to Juazeiro (Bahia), in the most arid Brazil, before echoing the government’s arguments: “They have been neglected for six years [durante los mandatos de Bolsonaro y Michel Temer] and we have no chance of recovering everything lost.”
The five long months of protest by Ibama environmental agents have resulted, for example, in a sharp drop in complaints of deforestation (-82%), in environmental fines (-64%), and in a spectacular increase (- 17 times) of the degraded area in the Amazon (that is, affected by the selective extraction of the most valuable wood), details Wallace Lopes, director of the national association of career civil servants Ascema, by telephone. He adds that they have only spent 3% of the budget for inspections on indigenous lands. They only go out into the field in case of emergencies such as large fires or court orders.
But the impacts are felt far beyond the Amazon, indigenous lands or natural reserves. Thousands of cars, stuck in ports due to the slowness of import procedures—because officials work with enormous zeal and rush the 60-day deadline. The granting of environmental licenses for new oil and gas infrastructure projects has been paralyzed. They limit themselves to renewing the existing ones. Bad news for a president who has just announced a mammoth plan for public investments—many of them in the sectors most affected by the mobilization in the environmental area—with the aim of reactivating the economy, creating jobs and attracting investments.
“In 2023 we work a lot and deliver results,” explains Lopes, referring to the first year of Lula’s third term, when deforestation in the Amazon fell by 22% after the disastrous results of Bolsonaro’s Presidency, when the loss of trees in The Amazon accelerated like never before in previous decades. They complain that neither the budget nor the department’s structure have changed from one year to the next.
“But we already warned that in 2024 we needed investments,” adds the Ibama inspector and points to the calendar: “In 2026 we have a COP [conferencia de la ONU sobre el cambio climático, que se celebrará en Belém, en la Amazonia]”.
The employees of the environmental bodies, aware that the Government wants to get there with a record of success, maintain the pressure. “We ask for a career restructuring beyond salary demands,” says Lopes, who is an environmental analyst and has coordinated important operations in the Amazon. He highlights the chronic deficit of officials in this area that has been going on for years. Ibama’s are about 4,900 when they should be around 8,000. The number of inspectors, for example, is so ridiculous that each one is responsible for dealing with “a territory equivalent to Denmark,” he explains.
Although they are fighting the Lula Government to demand better salary conditions, they admit that working with this Cabinet is light years away from the previous mandate: “The Bolsonaro Government was a separate chapter, we were persecuted and harassed. This Government lets you work, it does not interfere. We can plan and execute what we plan,” he emphasizes. And the leadership of environmental organizations is once again in the hands of civilians, career officials, and not military police.
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