https://www.huffpost.com/entry/brazil-amazon-deforestation-lula-indigenous_n_63cd5dd4e4b04d4d18dfa911
Brazil's Lula Works To Reverse Amazon Deforestation
Environmentalists, Indigenous people and voters supporting their causes were
important to Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva's election as Brazil's new president.
Jan 22, 2023
RIO DE JANEIRO (AP) — Shaking a traditional rattle, Brazil’s incoming head of
Indigenous affairs recently walked through every corner of the agency’s
headquarters — even its coffee room — as she invoked help from ancestors
during a ritual cleansing.
The ritual carried extra meaning for Joenia Wapichana, Brazil’s first
Indigenous woman to command the agency charged with protecting the Amazon
<https://www.huffpost.com/impact/topic/amazon> rainforest and its people.
Once she is sworn in next month under newly inaugurated President Luiz Inácio
Lula da Silva, Wapichana promises to clean house at an agency that critics
say has allowed the Amazon’s resources to be exploited
<https://apnews.com/article/jair-bolsonaro-forests-brazil-middle-east-deforestation-863224be226725da06db7768b305c3ea>
at the expense of the environment.
As Wapichana performed the ritual, Indigenous people and government officials
enthusiastically chanted “Yoohoo! Funai is ours!’’ — a reference to the
agency she will lead.
Environmentalists, Indigenous people and voters sympathetic to their causes
were important to Lula’s narrow victory over former President Jair Bolsonaro.
Now Lula is seeking to fulfill campaign pledges
<https://apnews.com/article/jair-bolsonaro-politics-brazil-brasilia-inaugurations-c6d222207d7a5bcbb71e2b6950514a9a>
he made to them on a wide range of issues, from expanding Indigenous
territories to halting a surge in illegal deforestation.
To carry out these goals, Lula is appointing well-known environmentalists and
Indigenous people to key positions at Funai and other agencies that Bolsonaro
had filled with allies of agribusiness and military officers.
In Lula’s previous two terms as president, he had a mixed record on
environmental and Indigenous issues. And he is certain to face obstacles from
pro-Bolsonaro state governors who still control swaths of the Amazon. But
experts say Lula is taking the right first steps.
The federal officials Lula has already named to key posts “have the national
and international prestige to reverse all the environmental destruction that
we have suffered over these four years of the Bolsonaro government,” said
George Porto Ferreira, an analyst at Ibama, Brazil’s environmental
law-enforcement agency.
Bolsonaro’s supporters, meanwhile, fear that Lula’s promise of stronger
environmental protections will hurt the economy by reducing the amount of
land open for development, and punish people for activities that had
previously been allowed. Some supporters with ties to agribusiness have been
accused of providing financial and logistical assistance to rioters who
earlier this month stormed Brazil’s presidential palace
<https://apnews.com/article/jair-bolsonaro-technology-brazil-government-b330b374f679f5e5f993d0f5e92f9434>,
Congress and Supreme Court.
When Bolsonaro was president, he defanged Funai and other agencies
responsible for environmental oversight. This enabled deforestation to soar
to its highest level since 2006
<https://apnews.com/article/climate-joe-biden-forests-environment-environment-and-nature-e9ed2edec21e83449dbcad31e412fc71>,
as developers and miners who took land from Indigenous people faced few
consequences.
Between 2019 and 2022, the number of fines handed out for illegal activities
in the Amazon declined by 38% compared with the previous four years,
according an analysis of Brazilian government data by the Climate
Observatory, a network of environmental nonprofit groups.
One of the strongest signs yet of Lula’s intentions to reverse these trends
was his decision to return Marina Silva
<https://apnews.com/article/technology-politics-brazil-amazon-river-climate-and-environment-eab9b17e6f0b9360a6c1ece2c57d78d1>
to lead the country’s environmental ministry. Silva formerly held the job
between 2003 and 2008, a period when deforestation declined by 53%. A former
rubber-tapper from Acre state, Silva resigned after clashing with government
and agribusiness leaders over environmental policies she deemed to be too
lenient.
Silva strikes a strong contrast with Bolsonaro’s first environment minister,
Ricardo Salles, who had never set foot in the Amazon when he took office in
2019 and resigned two years later following allegations that he had
facilitated the export of illegally felled timber.
Other measures Lula has taken in support of the Amazon and its people include:
— Signing a decree that would rejuvenate the most significant international
effort to preserve the rainforest — the Amazon Fund. The fund, which
Bolsonaro had gutted, has received more than $1.2 billion, mostly from
Norway, to help pay for sustainable development of the Amazon.
— Revoking a Bolsonaro decree that allowed mining in Indigenous and
environmental protection areas.
— Creating a Ministry of Indigenous Peoples, which will oversee everything
from land boundaries to education. This ministry will be led by Sônia
Guajajara
<https://apnews.com/article/technology-politics-brazil-government-united-states-802853d7e3f1364abf310971acb658a7>,
the country’s first Indigenous woman in such a high government post.
“It won’t be easy to overcome 504 years in only four years. But we are
willing to use this moment to promote a take-back of Brazil’s spiritual
force,” Guajajara said during her induction ceremony, which was delayed by
the damage pro-Bolsonaro rioters caused to the presidential palace.
The Amazon rainforest, which covers an area twice the size of India, acts as
a buffer against climate change by absorbing large amounts of carbon dioxide.
But Bolsonaro viewed management of the Amazon as an internal affair, causing
Brazil’s global reputation to take a hit. Lula is trying to undo that damage.
During the UN’s climate summit in Egypt in November, Lula pledged to end all
deforestation by 2030 and announced his country’s intention to host the COP30
climate conference in 2025. Brazil had been scheduled to host the event in
2019, but Bolsonaro canceled it in 2018 right after he was elected.
While Lula has ambitious environmental goals, the fight to protect the Amazon
faces complex hurdles. For example, getting cooperation from local officials
won’t be easy.
Six out of nine Amazonian states are run by Bolsonaro allies. Those include
Rondonia, where settlers of European descent control local power and have
dismantled environmental legislation through the state assembly; and Acre,
where a lack of economic opportunities is driving rubber-tappers who had long
fought to preserve the rainforest to take up cattle grazing instead.
<https://apnews.com/article/technology-world-news-forests-brazil-plants-e65f887c18e82ce1a0dd07ae491b5497>
The Amazon has also been plagued for decades by illegal gold mining
<https://apnews.com/article/amazon-mining-indigenous-gold-environment-brazil-c30953daa8482e42288ba509fe2e256a>,
which employs tens of thousands of people in Brazil and other countries,
such as Peru and Venezuela. The illegal mining causes mercury contamination
of rivers that Indigenous peoples rely upon for fishing and drinking.
“Its main cause is the state’s absence,” says Gustavo Geiser, a forensics
expert with the Federal Police who has worked in the Amazon for over 15 years.
One area where Lula has more control is in designating Indigenous
territories, which are the best preserved regions in the Amazon.
Lula is under pressure to create 13 new Indigenous territories — a process
that had stalled under Bolsonaro, who kept his promise not to grant “one more
inch” of land to Indigenous peoples.
A major step will be to expand the size of Uneiuxi, part of one of the most
remote and culturally diverse regions of the world that is home to 23
peoples. The process of expanding the boundaries of Uneiuxi started four
decades ago, and the only remaining step is a presidential signature, which
will increase its size by 37% to 551,000 hectares (2,100 square miles).
“Lula already indicated that he would not have any problem doing that,” said
Kleber Karipuna, a close aide of Guajajara.
