Promise made, promise kept. The first operations on the ground to combat deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon under the new president Lula began this week, public environmental agency Ibama learned on Friday.
“The deployment of teams for the start of inspection operations began on January 16, 2023,” the agency said, without specifying where these first operations had started.
“The objective is not to compromise the success of these actions,” it was justified.
The leftist leader, who began his third term on January 1, has vowed to fight for zero deforestation by 2030, after four years of mass destruction under the previous government of Jair Bolsonaro.
The former far-right leader has promoted policies that favor agribusiness and the mining sector throughout his tenure. The average annual deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon has thus increased by 75.5% compared to the previous decade during his presidency (2019-2022).
“The environmental team set up by the federal government has been working since the beginning of the transition period to build a plan capable of reversing the deforestation rates observed in recent months,” the government agency said.
Creation of a federal police.
On Wednesday, in an interview with the GloboNews channel, Lula said he wanted to create a federal police “to act with more force” in favor of protecting the forests.
He also said that he wanted to organize a meeting with the leaders of the countries that share the Amazon (Ecuador, Colombia, Peru, Venezuela, Bolivia and French Guiana) to “discuss a continental policy” for the preservation of the tropical forest.
“The commitment is to achieve zero deforestation in the Amazon by 2030. And I will pursue (this goal) by all means. I will need the armed forces, I will need the federal police (…) so that we can definitively solve this problem in Brazil”, he hammered.
Recently invested, Lula signed a series of decrees aimed at strengthening the protection of the Amazon. In particular, he reactivated the Amazon rainforest preservation fund, frozen since 2019 due to differences over the destination of the funds between Norway and Germany, the main donors, and the Bolsonaro government. The two countries have expressed their intention to recharge it again.
Lula also revoked a decree that authorized mining in indigenous areas and environmentally protected areas.
Reducing deforestation is one of the solutions advocated by UN climate experts (IPCC) to limit global warming.
Source: BFM TV
