Most observers agree that Jair Bolsonaro’s Brazil will arrive at the Glasgow Climate Summit with the purpose of asking for money for the Amazon. As is typical of the far-right government, its negotiators will present achievements and objectives without any connection to present reality and without any real commitment to meet them in the future. The reality shows records of fires and deforestation, weakened and militarized inspection bodies, illegal miners, loggers and thieves of public lands being encouraged to invade indigenous territories, bills of the president to allow the exploitation of protected lands. Bolsonaro is deliberately bringing the largest rainforest on the planet to the point of no return. His goal is to turn the Amazon into cattle ranches, mining projects and huge soy plantations in the hands of his supporters. And it is succeeding.
Bolsonaro needs international money and the Amazon is the best way to get it. Given the climate collapse, which has left recent traces in the summer of the northern hemisphere, with floods and heat waves above the worst historical records, the first face-to-face climate summit since the pandemic began has the thorny mission of preventing Brazil from preventing any minimally decent deal and, at the same time, not be fooled by a criminally lying government. The task is thankless.
The president of Brazil is not a pathological liar, as some believe, but a ruler who uses lies as a strategic political asset to execute his project of power. In his latest weekly social media feed, he announced that a UK study had found that the COVID-19 vaccine increases the likelihood of contracting HIV. Obviously, the information is false. Directly responsible, along with his Government, for more than 600,000 deaths from covid-19, Bolsonaro still considers it important to boycott vaccination. No one who follows closely – or even from a distance – this government expects that the lies about its actions in the Amazon that its representatives will bring to the COP will be less absurd and lethal than this one.
The protection of the Amazon, the fight against organized crime that acts on various fronts in the region, as well as the strengthening of the peoples of the jungle, need urgent investment. But for the money to be used effectively to protect the forest and reforest it, it will be necessary for the resources to be invested in the state governments and not in the federal one, to support the governors who in fact commit themselves to protecting the forest. And, above all, to directly support the projects of the Amazonian peoples and non-governmental organizations that carry out solid work in the region. It is said: putting money in Bolsonaro’s hand means becoming an accessory to the reelection of a global threat.
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