Globe: Brazil's Campaign Against The Amazon
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The future of the Amazon Rainforest continues to be in jeopardy. Decades of deforestation policy has left less and less of one of the most vital ecosystems for life, and Brazil has no intention of stopping in the pursuit of economic progress. This policy is now accelerating since far-right businessman Jair Bolsonaro came out on top in the country’s 2018 presidential election. But Bolsonaro’s ambitions of making Brazil an economic powerhouse will lead to a greater environmental crisis that could threaten the entire world.
Brazil has had a mixed record on being dutiful stewards to its environment. In 1965, the country established it’s Forest Code which restricted farmers to using at most 20 percent of their land in the Amazon for agricultural use, the other 20-80 percent must be native vegetation. But laws such as the Forest Code are difficult to manage, particularly with an area that measures 2.72 million square miles as illegal timber operations and farmers exploit the state’s inability to manage the vast wilderness. A survey from 2017 found that only a measly 6 percent of farmers willingly participated in reforestation efforts, while just over 75 percent stated that the government would have to force them to participate. This survey illustrates the difficulty of enforcing laws in an untamed land.
Further damaging the Forest Code’s provisions was the 2012 update which scaled back the land it protected. Now, if an Amazon state protects at least “65 percent of their territory as conservation units or indigenous reserves [they] can reduce the percentage of native vegetation required to be conserved on private lands…” Brazil’s Supreme Court also struck a heavy blow against the Amazon Rainforest in 2018 when it upheld these revisions to the Forest Code and reduced the penalties for past illegal deforestation.
For the indigenous population that makes the Amazon their home, the new Brazilian President is their worst nightmare. As a candidate, Mr. Bolsonaro eschewed the rights of these people, declaring “It’s a shame that the Brazilian cavalry wasn’t as efficient as the Americans, who exterminated their Indians.” This statement is a chilling reminder of the horrors the Amazon tribes faced during the late 20th century when settlers swept through the territory, tearing down trees, razing earth and murdering innocents simply because they were in the way.
Since taking control of the presidency, Bolsonaro has overseen a dramatic expansion of the deforestation policy. Indeed, the amount of land paved over between 2016 and 2018 pales in comparison to the figures just for July 2019. In this three year period before Bolsonaro took office in January 2019, between 457.7 and 739.2 kilometers of the Amazon Rainforest underwent deforestation; but between July 1st and July 22nd, 2019, approximately 1,260.2 kilometers have been cleared. This expansion comes after Brazil cleared 769.1 square kilometers in June 2019, a 60 percent increase since June 2018 that equates to one and a half soccer fields every minute.
The ramifications of Brazil’s long-standing deforestation policy pose an immense danger not only to the indigenous peoples but to the rest of South America and the world. The destruction of the Amazon Rainforest would result in a dramatic “intensification of greenhouse gas emissions as a consequence of the release of carbon from forest biomass and soil.” Furthermore, scientists predict that by 2100 -- if the Amazon continues to be destroyed at its current rate per day -- the area’s temperature will increase “by up to 14 degrees (Pereira, et. al, 2019). Once the rainforest is gone, the increase in temperatures could create a massive refugee crisis as people are either displaced within the country or across the borders in order to find a safe haven from the ecological disaster that might arise from complete deforestation and development. This will put greater strain on governments to accommodate growing populations while enduring hotter temperatures.
To counter these claims, President Bolsonaro and his allies argue that deforestation is an essential component in strengthening the Brazilian economy. The area is rich with in-demand resources such as timber (obviously), minerals (bauxite, copper, gold, iron, etc), oil, fertile land for crops and freshwater from the thousands of tributaries that make up the Amazon River. According to the Observatory of Economic Complexity (OEC), much of Brazil’s industry depends on the resources found in the Amazon. Iron ore, crude petroleum, soybeans and sugarcane make up a sizable portion of the Latin American country’s export. Being able to access more of these resources could possibly allow Brazil to continue its rise as the premiere economic powerhouse of South America. While global economies do need these resources, their extraction could lead to the land’s desolation. Mining could cause nearby rivers to be laden with toxins, resulting in damage to plant and animal life. These issues have arisen throughout the 20th and early 21st centuries Latin America as countries from Mexico to Peru had to struggle with safeguarding the environment while growing crops and mining ore during a difficult era (Thorp, 1998).
In regards to what the international community can do to stymie the Amazon’s destruction, the field is rather untested compared to other topics in international law. The Declaration of the United Nations Conference on the Human Environment (UNCHE) of June 1972 does acknowledge that states have the right to extract resources within their borders but also dictates that these acts must not cause irrevocable harm to the environment of other states. In theory, because the deforestation of the Amazon Rainforest would have staggering effects on the environment in neighboring countries such as Peru, Bolivia, Colombia, etc., these states could argue that Brazil is ignoring the UNCHE.
Brazil also has an obligation to follow the Paris Climate Agreement which seeks to -- among other aims -- decrease CO2 emissions by 20 percent. But as I have noted in the past, international law suffers from a lack of proper enforcement mechanisms that prevent states from breaking promises. Bolsonaro did threaten to leave the Agreement at some point unless Brazil receives some form of concessions. Other foreign powers can ask for a report from the country in question about their practices, forcing them to come clean on their actions and hopefully change their behavior.
This will prove to be a difficult task, especially with other South American countries with land in the Amazon Basin. Even though there have been squabbles in the past over pollution, Brazil’s neighbors are also pinning their countri’s futures on an extractive economy. Resources can bring in billions of dollars in revenue that these countries need to become independent of foreign money. But there are serious economic consequences associated with building an economy around the sale of commodity resources. If the countries mentioned above do center their exports around commodities, then they open themselves up to the pitfalls of the dependency theory. When this occurs, a resource-exporting country must rely on foreign economies to use their commodities, turn it into a finished product (such as a car), and then export it back to the original country to be sold at a higher price. Countries like Brazil and Mexico have been able to avoid this for the most part as they also have a strong industrial economy; but for economies like Bolivia, Peru, and Ecuador, this might be harder because they do not have the established industries to convert commodity resources into finished products. Fortunately, these countries have a diverse commodity portfolio which may buffer their economies from any economic shocks that would normally wreck an economy dependent on one or two commodity exports. Nonetheless, Latin American societies face significant hurdles in achieving economic development.
The situation in Brazil’s Amazon Rainforest is dire. Bolsonaro’s quest for the region’s resources will do more harm than good in the long-run, setting the stage for an environmental catastrophe. To combat this, the IC should examine its toolkit to assess what is the best way to discourage Brazil from continuing down its path towards ecological collapse. Regardless of what path is taken, standing by and letting an ecosystem that supports a healthy global environment be destroyed is too dangerous to ignore.
Other sources:
Pereira, Eder Johnson de Area Leao, Paulo Jorge Silveira Ferreira, Luiz Carlos de Santana Riberio, Terciane Sabadini Carvalho, Hernane Borges de Barros Pereira. “Policy in Brazil (2016-2019) threatens the conservation of the Amazon rainforest.” Environmental Science and Policy 100, (June 2019): 8-12
Thorp, Rosemary. “Growth and the Quality of Life Over the Century.” Progress, Poverty, and Exclusion: An Economic History of Latin America in the 20th Century, 14-45. Washington D.C.: Inter-American Development Bank, 1998.