MOSCOW (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 14th May, 2020) The Rainforest Fund, a US-based charity organization co-founded by UK singer Sting, in comments to Sputnik has condemned the decision by Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro to send troops to the Amazon rainforest, saying that the military does not have the expertise needed to prevent forest fires.
Last week, Bolsonaro authorized the deployment of armed forces in an attempt to prevent the destruction of the Amazon rainforest. Under the presidential order, the military now has the authority to coordinate the activities of the Brazilian Institute of the Environment and Renewable Natural Resources (IBAMA).
"Bolsonaro is adamant about opening the Amazon to business as he emboldened illegal loggers, miners and ranchers to occupy the forest according to his pro-development policy. Sending the military to stop the fires is the first step ... to sideline IBAMA. He [Bolsonaro] is rolling back routine environmental enforcement not granting funding. In fact, he has signed an order that grants the military to coordinate the activities of IBAMA. It is clear that he is pursuing his development plans putting in place a network for his success. But we hope that he will be stopped before," Dr. Franca Sciuto, the Rainforest Fund's chair of the board, said.
Instead of sending the military to the Amazon, Bolsonaro needs to unlock more funding for the country's environmental agencies and "let the environmental police do its job," the activist noted.
"The future for the indigenous communities of the Amazon Region is grim and need all the support from the Brazilian public opinion and the international community ... The issue is not one purely of policing but needs a much wider strategy which looks at public policing incentives which promote deforestation and involves economic and civil society actors especially local communities in finding and implementing long term solutions to stop it," Sciuto added.
Bolsonaro has been consistently criticized by environmental activists worldwide over the mishandling of the forest fires in the Amazon last year and over his attempts to deprive Brazil's indigenous community of their lands in the region. On April 29, Greenpeace's whistleblowing project, Unearthed, said that the Bolsonaro administration was using the COVID-19 outbreak as a distraction to pass laws offering amnesty on seized and deforested land and reducing the protection offered to indigenous people.
