Bolsonaro’s Brazil: A Pariah State?

The economies of Brazil and the EU are deeply entwined. The EU is the world’s largest single market, and Brazil’s second largest trading partner. 

A huge part of this trade centres around the agricultural goods which are driving the destruction of the Amazon and the Cerrado. 

The EU is the second biggest market for Brazilian soy and a significant importer of Brazilian beef. Evidence linking these industries to social conflict, land grabs and deforestation is overwhelming. Yet it seems that the EU is willing to ignore this and expand its role in these harmful sectors with increased trade. 

In June 2019, after 20 years of negotiations, the EU finalised a Free Trade Agreement (FTA) with the Mercosur bloc of nations, of which Brazil is the largest member. If unopposed, this deal will allow the import of 99,000 tonnes of beef tariff-free - sacrificing forests and rights on the altar of trade. 

But it’s not too late to act, and the momentum to stop the deal is gathering pace. 

The Austrian, Walloon and Netherlands parliaments have all rejected the Mercosur deal in its current form, and highest political representatives of France and Ireland have expressly criticised it. It seems they also have the support of some powerful financial players. 

This month European investors managing trillions of dollars of assets wrote an open letter warning that they could withdraw their investments in Brazil because increasing deforestation and the “dismantling” of policies to protect the environment and Indigenous Peoples are “creating widespread uncertainty”. 

With Germany assuming the EU Council Presidency this week, now is the time for those calling for the EU to discard the Mercosur agreement, to raise their voices -  and for the EU to underline its commitment to protecting human rights and the environment. 

A nation in turmoil 

Eighteen months into his four-year term, President Jair Bolsonaro of Brazil is mired in domestic political scandals, and his approval rating is plummeting. 

Brazil’s economy is in freefall, with capital fleeing at levels not seen since the 1990s. 

The currency, the Real, is now the most devalued in the world. 

The country is also the second worst-hit by COVID-19 on the planet, with no end to the spread of the virus in sight. 

All this is creating a febrile political and social atmosphere, and the sound of protestors banging pots and pans can be heard ringing out nightly from balconies across the country. 

But along with his reckless handling of the coronavirus crisis, Bolsonaro’s policies on the environment and human rights are also ringing international alarm bells. 

The catalogue of environmental and human damage since he took office on January 1, 2019, continues to mount. 

From August 2018 to July 2019, over 10,000 square kilometres of the Amazon rainforest was cut down, a rise of 34 per cent. This represents the worst year on year increase for a quarter of a century. (The Brazilian government’s attempt to challenge these figures in a letter to the members of the European Parliament in the second week of June, was thoroughly debunked.) 

Yet while international attention has focussed on the Amazon – especially during the fires which ripped through it in August 2019 - other important Brazilian biomes are also suffering. 

The Cerrado, considered the richest savannah in the world in terms of species biodiversity, has had 55 per cent of its area transformed into agricultural land in the last half century, much of it to meet international demand for beef and soy, including the EU’s. 

And the destruction of the Atlantic rainforest - which 200 years ago covered Brazil’s entire Atlantic coastline in a green mass, and penetrated as far as 300 kilometres into the interior but which has diminished by a staggering 93 per cent in the last 100 years - has also accelerated under Bolsonaro. 

Between 2018 and 2019, deforestation there rose by around 27 per cent compared to the previous period. If this continues, the biodiversity loss will be unfathomable: half the species in the Atlantic forest are not found anywhere else in the world, and the vast majority of the more than 200 mammals that risk being made extinct in Brazil, live in the Atlantic rainforest. 

On his first day in office, Bolsonaro issued a provisional measure removing the responsibility for Indigenous land demarcation from the government’s Indigenous affairs agency, FUNAI, and passing it to the agriculture ministry. 

Since then, the legislative assault on environmental and human rights protections has continued unabated. 

In February 2020, Bolsonaro proposed a law to allow commercial mining in Indigenous territories. From an estimated population of up to five million prior to colonisation, Brazil has around 850,000 Indigenous Peoples for whom 12 per cent of the country’s land is set aside. 

Applications to mine on Indigenous lands in the Amazon have increased by 91 per cent under Bolsonaro. These are mostly for gold, copper and diamond exploitation threatening the Kayapó and Munduruku peoples, among many others. 

The Brazilian subsidiary of Anglo American, based in London, submitted six requests for mineral exploration on Indigenous lands in 2019 and 46 since 2010. 

When mining activities encroach on Indigenous lands they are often suspended but the requests not rejected. “We call them Snow White processes,” says Márcio Santilli of the Brazilian NGO, Instituto Socioambiental. “They are laying in wait for the prince charming’s kiss - from the National Mining Agency”. 

Meanwhile, an alliance of NGOs and Brazilian political parties filed a lawsuit in June 2020 demanding the annulment of an order issued by the President of the environmental agency Ibama, Eduardo Bim, which allows the export of native wood without inspection, at the express request of loggers. 

The latest salvo against environmental protections, is the so-called land-grabbing bill, that Bolsonaro is attempting to push through, and which would clear the way for illegal loggers and ranchers to legalise land seizures in protected rainforest. 

This proposal, known as PL 2633, could move up to 65,000 square kilometres of public land into private hands. 

Opposition to the proposal is not just coming from the usual quarters. 

“It rewards land grabbing and illegal deforestation. It is an attack on the Amazon, Brazil and Brazilians,” says Candido Bracher, CEO of Itaú Unibanco, the largest private bank in Brazil. 

In May 2020, in an open letter to the Brazilian Congress, leading UK supermarkets Sainsbury’s, Tesco, Morrisons and Marks and Spencer and more than 30 others, threatened to boycott Brazilian goods if the land-grabbing bill is passed. Two major German chains also signed the letter. The NGO Campact has collected 350,000 signatures calling on Germany’s three other major supermarkets to follow suit.