Brazil’s Deforestation Quagmire
In the last few weeks, a series of major events has signaled the urgent need for constructive change to Brazil’s current policies regarding the Amazon rainforest. On May 19, 2011, Brazil’s National Institute for Space Research (INPE) released satellite images indicating that deforestation increased from 103 km2 in March and April 2010 to 593 km2 in the same period of 2011, a sixfold increase from a year ago. Not long after, on July 1, 2011, the INPE announced that this increase was not just a temporary aberration: deforestation in May 2011 stood at 268 km2, twice the amount of clearing as in May 2010. On May 25, 2011, leading forest conservationist José Cláudio Ribeiro da Silva and his wife Maria do Espírito Santo da Silva were killed in the Amazon state of Pará; this event was followed by the murders of environmental and land reform activists Adelino Ramos on May 28 and Obede Loyla Souza on June 15. And on the same day as da Silva’s murder, Brazil’s Chamber of Deputies, the National Congress’s lower house, voted 410-63 in favor of a bill that would allow individual states to lower the legal reserve requirement, the percentage of land that a landholder in the Amazon is obligated to preserve as rainforest.
Dilma Rousseff’s administration has decried the series of events, and articulated a number of government responses that are already in progress. Soon after the dramatic jump in deforestation was announced, Brazil’s Environment Minister Izabella Teixeira stated that the government was creating a ‘crisis cabinet’ to investigate the causes of the increase; President Rousseff has ordered a federal investigation of the Amazon assassinations, even though homicides are normally handled at the state level; and Rousseff considers the bill’s passing a major setback in her agenda, while promising to veto certain provisions if the bill is approved by the Federal Senate, Congress’s upper house.
This analysis was prepared by COHA Research Associate Elizabeth Rust.
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