A member of the Brazilian Institute for the Environment and Renewable Natural Resources fire brigade attempts to control a fire in a tract of the Amazon jungle in Apui, Brazil, on Aug. 11. (CNS photo/Ueslei Marcelino, Reuters)
Exactly one year ago, Brazil experienced deforestation and fire indexes in the Amazonian forest that reached then record highs. Escalating during the first year of President Jair Bolsonaro's government, this environmental crisis cast Brazil as a major global eco-villain.
This year conditions are even worse. Deforestation alerts issued by a satellite-based monitoring system report that losses this year may be about
35 percent higher. From Aug. 1, 2019 to July 31, 2020, more than 9,205 square kilometers, about 3.554 square miles, of Brazilian Amazon forest are threatened.
But those ecological offenses have been overshadowed by an arguably graver crisis, according to members of the local church, the government's disastrous response to the Covid-19 pandemic. "The government has shown that it has little or no interest in providing adequate health care," Cardinal Claudio Hummes, the president of the
Pan-Amazonian Ecclesial Network (known as Repam), told
America by email.
But at least a few global leaders have been able to keep their eyes on two Amazonian crises at the same time. Asked if Pope Francis were aware of the increasing degradation of the Amazon, Cardinal Hummes replied: "Absolutely."
The Synod of Bishops on the Amazon in 2019 defined the current economic model applied to the region as unjust and unsustainable. In an allusion to the fires last year that burned the largest tropical forest in the world, Pope Francis said that the Amazon really needed the
"fire that comes from the love of God."
According to Cardinal Hummes, the nation's reputation for ecological stewardship has been severely undermined by the Bolsonaro administration. "The world no longer trusts the justifications of the Brazilian government," he said.
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According to Cardinal Hummes, the church should accompany Amazonian peoples "in their historical journey, especially Indigenous peoples," he said. Among the proposals that emerged from the Amazon synod in 2019, he highlighted the need to promote "self-determination of the original peoples so that they may be protagonists in their history, and not the object of projects by those who only seek to extract wealth from their soil, their forests and their biodiversity."
[...]
"Rebuilding Brazil's credibility before the world will take a lot of time and concrete results," Cardinal Hummes said. For now, he said, "one cannot believe in a real change in direction by this government." He added that, even if the official discourse is softening, "the real intention is to distract" from the ongoing ecological degradation of the Amazon.
[...]
Cardinal Hummes believes that [Brazil environment minister, Ricardo Salles' recent statements] are "a dishonest way to leave everything as it is and even to speed up the devastation of the territory, while distracting public opinion with many meetings, speeches, theoretical, ideological and political discussions."
The ecologist Ima Vieira, who was an expert at the synod, told
America that creating a development model for the Amazon cannot be an isolated project but should be comprehensive and shared by all civic actors and concerned Amazonian states. According to Ms. Vieira, a researcher at the Emilio Goeldi Museum and an advisor to Repam, the main conflict in the region is between powerful multinational economic interests, especially in agribusiness and mining, and local communities that wish to promote ecologically sustainable initiatives.
"There is an interest in the appropriation of regional goods by the private sector, ignoring the needs of local actors," she said. "It is necessary to question whether it is possible to build a new development paradigm in the Brazilian Amazon, reconciling and converging such diverse interests. I do believe it is."
Ms. Vieira confirms that the inspection, control and monitoring of forests have decreased over the past two years. She believes the government stewards of the Amazon should aim for "zero deforestation and degradation."
Sustainable forest management techniques have been applied on a small scale by many communities. She also proposes the formal demarcation of Indigenous lands and areas that for centuries have been home to Afro-Brazilian communities (known as
quilombola). In most cases, demarcations have been pending for years.
"Mining and illegal logging bring huge risk to Amazonian communities, and this has been [adversely] impacting the territory and the peoples by perpetuating high deforestation and fire indexes," she said. "We should be encouraging a forest economy that preserves local peoples' rights to use and manage their lands, avoiding the clearing of native forests, as well as promoting justice, social equality and respect for cultural diversity," Ms. Vieira said.