Politicians who vow to end deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon aren’t anything new. However, President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva claimed he could pull it off by 2030 with assistance from U.S. President Joe Biden.
When the Brazilian president—commonly known as Lula—made a passionate campaign promise in 2022 to end Amazonian deforestation, it was an instant crowd-pleaser among climate change advocates.
It also laid the groundwork for Lula’s discussion with Biden on Feb.10.
This includes supporting the reactivated Amazon Fund, which former Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro suspended in 2019 due to resource management changes and questionable money distribution.
But now that Lula is in office, some Brazilians say it'll be business as usual.
Skeptics further point to Lula’s close ties to Beijing and high demand for agricultural exports as significant roadblocks to conservation.
China became Brazil’s dominant trade partner in 2009 during Lula’s second term.
The Poverty Factor
“The whole world sees Lula as someone who is good for the poor, good for the environment. The opposite is the case,” Brazil’s former minister of foreign affairs, Ernesto Araujo, told The Epoch Times.Araujo says Lula is subjecting Brazil’s forests to “old corruption schemes” through poorly regulated NGOs. He noted that many well-intended international donations end up in politicians’ pockets. This has been the case for years.
“These first few months have actually seen increased deforestation in the Amazon. It’s a political issue, not an environmental issue,” he said.
Billions of dollars donated to Amazonian aid organizations since the 1980s haven’t kept Brazil’s trees from falling. According to Araujo, it’s because most NGOs don’t address the root of the problem: poverty.
An acute lack of job opportunities in Brazil’s remote Amazonian states has fueled unsustainable forestry practices for decades.
Public outcry and Lula’s approach to deforestation focus primarily on illegal gold and timber sourcing, but cattle ranching and soy farming are the main culprits.
Ten percent of that was used for soy production alone.
And Lula has expressed no intentions of scaling back on either.
In 2021, Bolsonaro addressed the need for environmentally sustainable jobs in the region during the yearly Amazon Initiative and meeting of the Inter-American Development Bank.
Bolsonaro said preservation hinged on “the creation of jobs, products, and services that use the forest’s resources in a sustainable manner.”
Belisario Arce, the executive director of the PanAmazonia Association, agrees with this sentiment. He says tackling deforestation must be done through the lens of poverty.
“Poverty is a main cause of deforestation,” Arce told The Epoch Times, adding, "I don’t think the new government will do anything to curb deforestation because the causes are the same.”
Arce says economic alternatives to clearing land are how his native state of Amazonas managed to preserve a remarkable amount of its original forest.
Manaus is the largest city in the Brazilian Amazon and serves as a manufacturing hub for major international companies like Samsung and Honda.
The city is also a free trade and industrial zone with tax-exempt status. Consequently, untouched forests thrive beyond the thriving jungle metropolis of more than 2 million people.
Arce compared it to the old adage: Rich people have nice gardens.
Oversight Needed
Arce is skeptical of the reactivated Amazon Fund and the river of money it will pour into Brazilian NGOs. That’s because little to no government oversight is involved in handing out money.“I don’t know how they used that money the Amazon Fund gave to Brazilian NGOs [in years past]. It had no impact on deforestation,” he said.
Over the decades, Arce has watched billions flow through charity organizations—some of which have received money directly from the Amazon Fund—only to end up funneled into local political campaigns.
Arce noted huge salaries are paid to NGO executives in Brazil. Many of these are higher than supreme court judges.
“What’s the result of that money that was given to Brail through NGOs after three decades? Nothing,” he said.
Due to the lack of oversight, very little of that money goes toward conservation. It’s a problem that became prevalent in the 1980s and hasn’t gone unnoticed by those writing big checks in recent years.
In 2019, Germany pulled 35 million euros of aid money for Brazilian Amazon conservation over “great concerns” with increasing deforestation. It was the same year Bolsonaro suspended the Amazon Fund over suspicious money handling.
But now that the fund is up and running again, U.S. officials are eager to support it.
During a March 15 Foreign Relations Committee hearing Deputy Special Presidential Envoy for Climate Richard Duke proclaimed, “The risks posed by Amazon forest loss have global implications.”
Green New Deal
Lula’s approach to reversing decades of rapid agribusiness expansion is creating a “green credit” program that allows farmers to apply for government-subsidized loans in exchange for using more sustainable agricultural practices.Some of these include the conversion of degraded pastures into crop-planting areas and the implementation of the use of biopesticides.
Lula’s appointee for the head of the Brazilian Development Bank, Aloizio Mercadante, said, “We can open differentiated lines of credit to encourage migration to agriculture that sequesters carbon.”
But there’s no getting around the fact that agriculture and beef industries require clear land and fewer trees.
Though beyond exports, Chinese companies and banks have been chipping away at Brazil’s forests.
This month, Lula and a delegation of 90 agricultural representatives will visit Beijing and Shanghai between March 26–30 to discuss diversified trade relations.
The visit seems an odd juxtaposition to the head of state’s proclaimed goals for the Amazon.
Arce isn’t surprised and said he expects social and environmental problems to increase in Brazil’s Amazonian states under Lula.
Araujo added Lula’s empowerment of unregulated Brazilian NGOs would amount to nothing but keeping the indigenous “poor and dependent” to continue securing international funding.
“That’s the way they get money,” he said.
