The federal government has placed on public consultation the fifth phase of the Action Plan for the Prevention and Control of Deforestation in the Legal Amazon (PPCDAm), created in the first Lula administration (2002-2006), which aims to stimulate the sustainable development of the Amazon. For the first time, the plan proposes to fight illegal mining, which is causing a humanitarian crisis in the Yanomami Indigenous Land and threatening dozens of other indigenous territories. Another proposal is to strengthen credit for sustainable activities and veto it for irregular producers.

The Action Plan for the Prevention and Control of Deforestation in the Legal Amazon was shelved by the administration of Jair Bolsonaro, who centralized the responsibility for the forest in the Amazon Council headed by Hamilton Mourão, then Vice-President. The PPCDAm was responsible for reducing deforestation in the Amazon by 83% between 2004 and 2012. The current plan has the goal of zero illegal deforestation by 2030 and the new text can receive suggestions from people or organizations until April 26th.

On his first day in office, president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva (PT) signed the first decrees revoking or repealing measures adopted by his predecessor Jair Bolsonaro. The so-called “revogaço” (a package of repeals) was promised during Lula’s election campaign and targeted firearms policies, environment and secrecy practices involving public data. 

With regards to the environmental agenda, the president signed the following decrees: determined a 45-day deadline to finalize a proposal to regulate the National Council for the Environment (CONAMA, which was strongly damaged under Bolsonaro); ; reestablishment of rules to reopen the Amazon Fund (shut down by Bolsonaro in the first few months of this government) – both Norway and Germany announced R$ 3,3 billion of Fund resources for immediate release; revoked a decree permitting gold mining inside protected and sensitive areas that was signed by Bolsonaro;  resuming the Action Plan to Prevent and Control Deforestation, including all Brazilian biomes to reach the zero deforestation target; reviewed the norms for environmental fines and sanctions, excluding practises that led to impunity for environmental criminals (that were also weakened by Bolsonaro); established the permanent Interministerial Commission to Prevent and Control Deforestation engaging 19 federal ministries, including the Ministry of Climate and Environment, Agriculture and Livestock, Agrarian Development and Indigenous Peoples; the decrees also rearranged the civil society participation on the board of the National Environmental Fund and gave back to the Ministry of the Environment the control over the Rural Property Database (which was moved to Agriculture under Bolsonaro). 

On Monday January 2nd, Funai had its name changed: created in 1967 as the National Indian Foundation, it is now called National Foundation for Indigenous People.  FUNAI is now part of the structure of the newly established Ministry of Indigenous People. For the first time also, Funai is presided over by an indigenous woman, the former federal deputy Joenia Wapichana. 

On the same day, Minister Marina Silva canceled a norm created by former minister of the Environment Ricardo Salles that took away important technical attributions to Ibama’s environmental agents. According to  Brasil de Fato publication, the norm paralyzed Ibama’s inspections and law enforcement capacities. A survey by Estadao media showed that out of 1,154 infractions and fines issued after October 2019, when Salles changed the rules, 98% were not enforced or charged. Marina Silva also determined that infractions and fines must be made publicly available on the internet. During Bolsonaro’s government, the database on infractions and fines were made inaccessible. It was also determined that 50% of money raised with fines will be destined to the National Environmental Fund (FNMA), to support environmental policies. Minister Marina also said that more repeals and changes will be published in the upcoming days and weeks.

The Legal Amazon region registered its highest rate of deforestation in the last 15 years, according to data consolidated by the Project for Monitoring Deforestation in the Legal Amazon by Satellites (Prodes), from the National Institute for Space Research (Inpe). Between August 2020 and July 2021, the regi0n lost 13,235 square kilometers of forest, an increase of 21.97 % compared to the previous period.

Coordinator of the National Council for the Legal Amazon (CNAL), Vice President Hamilton Mourão blamed himself for the government’s failure to fight deforestation, in a statement to the press after the last CNAL meeting in 2021.

Brazil left the 26th United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP26) how it entered: discredited internationally due to its environmental policy.

Germany and Norway, the main donors of the Amazon Fund, paralyzed since 2019 due to poor governance from the Ministry of Environment and the accelerated destruction of the biome, are waiting for an indication of how the commitments made by the country at the conference will be implemented. Until this happens, the resources remain frozen.

The Brazilian commitment to reduce 50% of the country’s greenhouse gas emissions by 2030, for example, is not only insufficient, but also anachronistic, since it uses a calculation baseline from 2005.

The research institute WRI Brasil reaffirmed the insufficient character of the Brazilian goals: “Brazil reached the end of this COP26 with the same level of ambition that it committed to in Paris six years ago.”

Even though it is proven to be Ineffective in slowing deforestation, the Brazilian government continues to be defend the presence of the Armed Forces in the Amazon. Since 2019, there have been three Law and Order Guarantee operations (GLO)  issued by the government. The last one ended in August. Altogether, the three cost R$ 550 million (US$ 100 million)  while environmental devastation broke successive records.

According to Vice President Hamilton Mourão, the military must remain in the field so the country can present “positive numbers” at the 26th United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP-26), which begins Oct. 31 in Scotland. The speech occurred during the last meeting of the Amazon Council, of which Mourão is president, on August 24.

A study conducted by NGOs Article 19, Imaflora and Instituto Socioambiental (ISA) highlights and reveals the serious setbacks in civil society participation in socio-environmental policies throughout the Bolsonaro’s administration and in access to information. Exclusion of collegiate bodies, reduction of seats in councils, threats to servants and database blackouts are some strategies mentioned.

Of 22 governmental environmental collegiate organizations, more than half were impacted by extinctions or restructuring, points out the “Mapping of transparency and social participation setbacks in Brazilian environmental policy”. The study highlights the weakening of the National Environmental Council (Conama) – which had its number of councilors reduced from 96 to 23 participants, and of the 23 seats for civil society, only 4 remained – and the National Biodiversity Commission (Conabio), whose representatives from academia and society went from 8 to 2.

For Bruno Vello, Imaflora Public Policy analyst, the survey indicates that “setbacks in environmental policies seen over the past few years make it difficult for society to monitor and participate in decisions made by the Executive,” he said in a note published by ISA.

“While the Amazon is burning at record speed, limiting the operations of environmental and social groups and organizations can have devastating consequences,” says the letter sent by European Parliament members to Vice President Hamilton Mourão and to the Amazon Council, spearheaded by the VP, as reported by the newspaper Folha de S. Paulo. The criticism was motivated by the information, publicized by the newspaper O Estado de S. Paulo weeks before, that the Amazonian Council plans, through a new regulatory framework, to have total control over the actions of non-governmental organizations in the Amazon until 2022.

Among the signatories is Anna Cavazzini, vice-president of the European Parliament delegation for relations with Brazil. The criticism voices the European Union’s concern about the devastation of the forest, which could halt the trade agreement with Mercosur, signed in 2019.

The document defends cooperation between government and organized civil society and reiterates the positive aspects of NGOs’ actions for Brazilian environmental policy: “NGOs are not there to replace the government, but to complement its actions – and, crucially, to help make public policies more transparent and effective through free criticism”.

However, “free criticism” of Brazilian environmental policy has been a target of attacks by the federal government. In another attempt to curtail it, the Minister of the Environment Ricardo Salles has filed four judicial interpellations, through the Federal Attorney General’s Office (AGU), against his critics – the targets are Márcio Astrini, coordinator of the Climate Observatory, journalists André Borges (O Estado de S. Paulo) and Cedê Silva (O Antagonista), as well as the scientist Antonio Donato Nobre, researcher of the Earth System Science Center of the National Institute of Space Research (Inpe). 

The Amazon Council plans, through a regulatory framework, to have full control over the activities of non-governmental organizations in the Amazon by 2022. The proposal aims not only to control the work of NGOs, but also to limit the actions of those that violate “national interests”, according to documents obtained by the newspaper O Estado de São Paulo. The text, however, does not specify what would be the criteria to be fulfilled by the organisations and what are such interests.

The organizations heard in the report criticized the proposal, and pointed out in the initiative the lack of social participation and authoritarianism that mark the environmental policy of the Bolsonaro administration. “They don’t want to go through the people’s scrutiny and intend to impose themselves without dialogue with the society,” said Ariana Ramos, coordinator of the Instituto Socioambiental [Socio-environmental Institute] (ISA), an organization that has been working since 1994 to defend the environment and indigenous rights.

For the Climate Observatory (OC), the measure is unconstitutional and is part of the “insistent and repugnant campaign of defamation of NGOs by government agents”. In a note, the OC warned about the existence of a device that already has the function of regulating the work of the institutions – the Regulatory Framework of Civil Society Organizations (MROSC), via Law 13.019/2014 – and recalled the attempts of coercion against NGOs by the government of Bolsonaro. “The attacks and persecutions of Bolsonaro’s administration against civil society are a regrettable constant in its political action. Initiatives aiming to control the NGOs have been previously presented by the Executive Power and rejected by the Brazilian Parliament – as in the case of the Provisional Measure (MP) 870/2019. Also in December 2019, agents of the National Intelligence Agency (Abin) went to the Climate Summit (COP25) to monitor (spy) Brazilian NGOs present there”.

The vice-president Hamilton Mourão, who is in charge of the Council, said he didn’t know the proposal, although he signed a memorandum calling servers to discuss the group’s guidelines, including the NGOs control.

The new initiative of the Amazon Council comes to public two months after General Augusto Heleno, chief minister of the government’s Institutional Security Office, publicly attacked, under the pretext of “the crime against the homeland,” one of the most respected Brazilian indigenous organizations, the Indigenous Peoples Network (APIB). Heleno accused the APIB of “publishing fake news against Brazil; imputing environmental crimes to the President of the Republic; and supporting international campaigns to boycott Brazilian products”. In response, the organization stated “that the greatest crime that damages our homeland is the government’s omission in the face of the destruction of our biomes, protected areas, illegal burning, shackling, deforestation and invasion of our lands and the theft of our wealth”.

At the head of two key institutions for environmental protection, the Amazon Council and the Amazon Fund, Vice President Hamilton Mourão organized a tour of the Amazon with ambassadors, which began on October 4. Representatives from the European Union, Germany, France, Sweden, United Kingdom, Spain, Portugal, Canada, Peru, Colombia and South Africa participated in the visits.

As reported by El País, the trip was criticized by environmentalists for proposing a “shielded” route, concentrated on the outskirts of Manaus, capital of Amazonas State, and the city of São Gabriel da Cachoeira, ignoring the regions most affected by deforestation. As a counterpoint, the NGO Greenpeace sent the ambassadors an alternative route, including the states of Pará and Mato Grosso do Sul. “A diplomatic trip through the Brazilian Amazon that does not include in its route the challenges and serious environmental damage that the region faces, is an incomplete trip and a missed opportunity,” said the NGO.

To the DW, Heiko Thoms, German Ambassador, one of the main donor countries of the now paralyzed Amazon Fund, stated that the trip does not change the country’s impression about the Brazilian environmental crisis. In parallel to Mourão’s invitation, Thoms met with the Coordination of Indigenous Organizations of the Brazilian Amazon (COIAB) and the Sustainable Amazon Foundation.

The United Kingdom diplomat Liz Davidson shared her impressions in a series of Twitter posts. She reinforced the importance of the visit “at a crucial moment of the sustainable development agenda in Brazil and in the world”. Davidson, however, regretted “not going to the areas most affected by deforestation and not having had the opportunity to talk with organizations and social leaderships working in the region, which would have helped to conduct our dialogue in a more balanced and transparent manner”.

The visit took place amid strong international pressure against Brazil’s high deforestation rates. In early October, the European Parliament called for changes in Mercosur’s environmental policy so that the economic agreement between the blocs could be signed; in June, a group of investors sent an open letter to the Brazilian embassies in several countries expressing concern about growing deforestation rates.

After Brazil experienced record levels of deforestation in the Amazon and Pantanal, added to the negative international repercussions of the administration of minister Ricardo Salles, the government and the business sector started discussing, once again, administrative reforms in the Ministry of the Environment (MMA), as a response to the environmental crisis. According to the newspaper Folha de S. Paulo, agribusiness entrepreneurs, allied with sectors of the government, started in June a joint effort to pressure for the merger of the MMA and the Ministry of Agriculture, Livestock and Supply (Mapa), one of Bolsonaro’s promises on being elected. These economic groups see the measure as a way to ease Brazil’s image abroad, by transferring the leadership of Brazilian environmental policy to the Amazon Council, led by Vice President Hamilton Mourão. Mourão, in turn, although seen as a solution, has made frequent attacks on the National Institute for Space Research (Inpe), responsible for monitoring deforestation in the country. He accused Inpe officials of opposing the federal government due to official data that point to an increase in fires in 2020. Also, according to the report, representatives of slaughterhouses and exporters are leading ​​the merger, who fear losing the international market. 

Another potential merger is also on the agenda: of the Brazilian Institute for the Environment and Renewable Natural Resources (Ibama) and the Chico Mendes Institute for Biodiversity (ICMBio). On October 2nd, the creation of a Working Group (WG) for “analysis of synergies and efficiency gains” in the event of joining the control agencies was published in the Official Gazette of the Union, with 120 days to study the decision, counting from the first meeting. In a statement, the National Association of Environmental Servers (Ascema-Nacional) evaluates the merger as “totally inopportune and problematic” and questions the composition of the WG, with “military police officers and political nominees linked to the ruralist caucus who have no knowledge environmental agenda“. The text calls attention to the systematic dismantling of the Ministry of the Environment promoted by minister Ricardo Salles, “in the sense of weakening and delegitimizing the Environment agencies, and the militarization of Brazilian environmental policy. In September, the association published the report” Chronology of a Disaster Announced “, which brings together actions by Jair Bolsonaro and his government, covering the pre-election period, in 2018, until August 2020.

The rumours that European countries would block the EU-Mercosur trade agreement due to the Brazilian environmental crisis were getting steam among european diplomats in June 2020 according to reports from El País. By late August, German Chancellor Angela Merkel said she had “considerable doubts”  about her support for the agreement because of the rise in Amazon deforestation. 

In September, while Brazil broke new records on forest fires and deforestation rates, the trade agreement was once again threatened, and pressure from corporations and investment funds over the Brazilian government also increased.

On the 09th, an international team of researchers from universities of Oxford (UK), Louvain (Belgium) and Columbia (USA) published a critical analysis of the EU-Mercosur agreement saying that the text of the deal does not secure mechanisms for transparency, sanction and inclusion of local communities, going against environmental regulations from the European Union. The study indicates that the agreement fails to guarantee sustainable chains of production. In that same week, the International Trade Commission from the European Parliament issued a motion demanding more protection rules on the block trade agreements, in yet another sign of the obstacles to ratifying the treaty. 

A week later, on September 15th, two significant open letters tried to exert pressure on the Brazilian government. VP Hamilton Mourao received a document signed by ambassadors from 8 European nations — Germany, UK, France, Italy, Netherlands, Norway, Denmark and Belgium — with a clear message: “Brazil is making it harder and harder for corporations and investors to comply with their environmental, social and governance criteria”. The countries who sent the letter take part in the Amsterdam Declaration, a partnership among nations to promote sustainable chains of production that prevent forest destruction.

In the other letter, a coalition formed by 230 organizations and companies linked to agribusiness and environment published a set of six proposals to stop Amazon deforestation. The document was sent to president Bolsonaro, VP Mourão, Federal Ministers, leaders of the Senate and House of Representatives, and embassies and members of the European Parliament. “Not only because of the social-environmental losses, but also because of the threats that forest destruction poses to the national economy. There is a clear and growing concern about deforestation from several sectors of national and international society”,  states the letter signed by the Coalition, which includes NGOs such as WWF and agribusiness companies such as JBS, Marfrig, Basf and Bayer. 

Meanwhile, in France, over 20 civil society organizations issued a statement on the 16th demanding the “final burial” of the EU-Mercosur treaty because of the “disastrous impacts” on forests, climate and human rights. The NGOs manifest came out on the eve of a technical report commissioned by the French government on the effects of the commercial agreement. 

On the 18th,  the French government report was published.  According to reports on the 184 page-study by independent experts on economy and the environment, it concludes that “the agreement is a missed opportunity by the EU to use its negotiation power to obtain solid safeguards that respond to the environmental, sanitary and social expectations of its citizens”. The experts estimate that deforestation in Mercosur countries could accelerate by 5% per year due to higher demand for beef in the EU,  increasing greenhouse gas emissions and questioning whether the relative financial gains of the agreement could compensate for the climate damage it would generate. 

Upon the release of the study, president Emmanuel Macron’s government confirmed it will maintain opposition to the treaty as it stands, a position they have been sustaining since 2019, and that it is willing to renegotiate the terms of the accord to secure the Paris Agreement climate objectives.

After a meeting with CEOs from several large Brazilian corporations, Brazil’s vice president Hamilton Mourão declared to the newspaper O Estado de S. Paulo that the government actions to fight deforestation and forest fires in the Amazon were “late”.

He recalled the Amazon Council, presided by him, which the government launched in February. He stated the actions “should have started in December or January, at the latest”. NGOs and environmentalists have been criticizing the council for its lack of a clear agenda or budget.

VP Mourão also blamed the coronavirus pandemic for lack of investments in land use monitoring systems. However,  the National Institute of Space Research (Inpe) keeps raising deforestation alerts that the government chooses to ignore”, according to the NGO Greenpeace. Ibama, the Brazilian Environmental Agency,  uses Inpe’s alerts to fight forest fires and other environmental crimes. During April 2020, the alerts by the System of Deforestation Detection in Real Time (Deter) rose by 64% when compared to the same month in 2019.

The government’s budget for the Ministry of the Environment suffered a 10% cut from 2019 to 2020, affecting the prevention and control of forest fires. 

An analysis published in December 2019 had already shown that the Ministry of the Environment did not spend a cent of the authorized R$ 8 million budget from the National Fund on Climate Change, destined to produce studies, projects and enterprises to mitigate and adapt to climate change. 

Ricardo Salles, the minister of the environment, also attended the meeting to speak about carbon credits defined by the Paris Agreement. 

After Jair Bolsonaro “recreated” the Amazon Council — once called Legal Amazon Council, created in 1995 —, altering its coordination from the Ministry of the Environment to the vice-presidency, the NGO Greenpeace criticized the measure, stating that the “council doesn’t have a plan, goals or budget”. They also condemned the lack of participation by the state governors. When questioned by journalists about Greenpeace allegations, Bolsonaro once again snapped and called the NGO “trash” and “filth”.

After receiving criticism from the international NGO Human Rights Watch (HRW), president Jair Bolsonaro announced the creation of the Amazon Council, coordinated by the vice-president Hamilton Mourão.

Via Twitter, Bolsonaro said that the council has the objective of “coordinating the several ministerial actions towards preserving, defending and sustainably developing” the Region. He also announced the creation of the National Environmental Force, responsible for protecting the Amazon.