Diogo Lopes de Oliveira and Ronaldo P. Santos
March 20, 2020 | Reflections
Brazil is famous worldwide for its agri-environment richness, responsible for over 40% of the country’s trade balance. The Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro (took office in January 2019), who is openly pro agribusiness, has proposed a “new environmental agenda” that he claims will build the Brazilian economy. However, almost all analysts say that it will instead dismantle the green agenda – especially for the Amazon which holds the vast majority of the legally protected forests inside of the country’s parks and indigenous lands. Indeed, many believe this new approach could actually harm the Brazilian image and set back its global agri-environment leadership. We will explore how the government is making decisions waiving science, denying it, and exacerbating problems with the use of rhetoric.
Fig. 1 – Brazil’s Amazon Region and its protected area (indigenous and Parks). Designed by the authors based on INPE data.
Science undermining: A rising movement
Science denialism was not invented by the current President of Brazil. For different reasons and strategies, including market competition, other countries —such as, but not restricted to the USA and Australia — have tried denying science before. Although Brazil is not a top world scientific leader, its tradition in technology cannot be disregarded (23rd place among 179). The country holds a sizable amount of oil; is a leader both in seashore oil exploration and high-tech hydroelectric power; is one of the world's top leaders in private high-speed jets, along with being a well-known strong competitor on the world’s agricultural sector. The current Brazilian Minister of Science is a former astronaut and at least two members of the president’s cabinet hold PhD degrees. Yet, many members of Bolsonaro’s staff have declared non-scientific beliefs, including denying climate change science and arguing against the work and value of universities.
In late 2019, the Brazilian Institute for Space Research (INPE) published deforestation data that Amazon depletion was 30% higher than it had been in 2018. Earlier, Bolsonaro had already called scientific data “lies” and said that Ricardo Galvão, the head of INPE, was “at the service of some NGO, damaging Brazil's image.” INPE’s mission is to “produce science and technology in the space areas and the terrestrial environment and offer products and unique services for the benefit of Brazil.” On August 2nd, Ricardo Galvão was dismissed despite being named by Nature as one of the top ten people in science for 2019. The Ministry of Environment then withdrew maps and information on biome conservation areas data from its website, fired the top official responsible for climate issue dialog and slashed funds for environmental agencies.
Too much rhetoric, no science evidence
In Brazil, there is a fair amount of flexibility for public officers to make their own decisions, as long as the decisions are for the public good, within the law, and are made under compelling motivation. The Brazilian Constitution states that the Public Administration must comply with science as a base for the country’s development (article 62, paragraph 5º, articles 218 and 219-B). Yet, by far, most of the decisions of Brazil’s top administrative officers seem to be motivated only by catchphrases on Twitter or Facebook and they never employ valid counter-arguments against the world’s 12,000 scientists on global warming. For instance, during the COP 25 and the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES), scholars made clear the importance of Brazil in climate change:
“Brazil is an important country for the Paris Agreement, as it is a huge economic powerhouse, which also contains the Amazon forest. Emissions from Brazil could be considerable in the future, if they are not contained. Thus Brazil’s staying in the Paris agreement is important not only for Brazil but for the whole country,” said Dr. Natalie Mahowald, professor of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences at Cornell University and member of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).
Yet instead, President Bolsonaro’s approach emboldens the stakeholders in the field to violate the law. Indeed, it has been said that a big part of the 2019 peak in Amazon deforestation (Figure 2, line red) can be attributed to the President and his staff’s both pro-business and anti-environmental rhetoric. Although led by the Vice President, the official plan for the Amazon region so far is considered weak and pointless by most experts.
Fig. 2 – Deforestation rates in Brazil Amazon, from august to July, in the yeas 2015-2020 (by @Erika_Berenguer, March 2020).
Brazil might be an ex-leader in world food production?
Brazil’s leaders seem to believe that their strong rhetoric and science-denial protect agribusiness ranchers and the economy — that the more the forests are cleared for mining, farming, and grassing, the higher the revenues will be. But, more likely, it might work only for a moment. The high competitiveness of Brazilian farm-goods comes because the country is one of the most sustainable among its counterparts. It has been shown to be possible to ramp up the GDP of agro-products while simultaneously protecting the forest (Fig.3). This approach paved the way for the “Amazon Fund” — a US$ 1.2 billion donation from Germany and Norway — that is used for law enforcement among other things.
Fig. 3 – Deforestation rates versus agribusiness GDP in Brazil Amazon, from 1999 – 2013. Red line forest deforestation, in km2; the blue the GDP in R$. By @paulogbarreto
Money obtained from this Fund would bring relief to the Brazilian federal budget, giving the government an opportunity to invest taxpayer funds in agribusiness incentives, rural loans, and more. But, unexplainably, the Bolsonaro administration said the country did not need such aid. 2019 had the lowest number of fines imposed by law enforcement due to deforestation. They claim that no budget was available, but it was plainly and simply a decision by a new administration to not accept available funds.
The “new policy” raises a risk for the economy. First, the recent highly-celebrated EU-Mercosul Trade Agreement has an environmental protection clause. Second, Brazil’s stock market and dollar exchange depend heavily on large world financing groups, many of whom are skeptical about investing in countries openly failing their own green policies. Even pro-Bolsonaro and pro-market economists are saying repeatedly that the “new policy” might jeopardize the government’s efforts to stimulate the agribusiness sector. Not surprisingly, Brazil’s moderated agribusiness sectors have put out calls for environmental responsibility. Although Brazil is still a big seller of agri-goods — mostly because of price competitiveness and the planet’s hunger — the world is changing, and the Brazilian government’s baseless decisions regarding the agri-environmental sector might destroy the country’s reputation, creating a dangerous planetary situation.
Diogo Lopes de Oliveira is Professor of Social Communications at the Federal University of Campina Grande (UFCG), Brazil and visiting scholar at the Department of Communication at Cornell University. His research aims to better understand the role of science communication in NGO’s strategy to raise awareness, especially in socio-environmental conflicts in Latin America.
Ronaldo P.Santos is an Agronomist and Lawyer. He has been studying the interface between Legislation, Land and Environmental Management in Amazon Forest, Brazil. Currently, he is a Visiting Fellow by Humphrey Fellowship (2019-2020) at CALS – College of Agriculture and Life Science, Cornell University, NY, USA.
The Authors thank Dr. Bruce Lewenstein and Ariel Gold for corrections.
Published: 03/20/2020