100 Days of Bolsonaro: Ending the EU's Role In
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100 days of Bolsonaro Ending the EU’s role in the assault on the Amazon Illegal deforestation on indigenous land - Tenharim do Igarapé Preto, Amazonas, 2018 Photo: Ibama Flickr.com / CC Endorsing NGOS Fern, Europe / Brazil’s Indigenous People Articulation (APIB), Brazil / Forest Peoples Programme, UK / Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy (IATP), Europe / Both ENDS, the Netherlands / Act Alliance, Europe / Society for Threatened Peoples, Switzerland / PSEDA-ILIRIA, Albania / Estonian Forest Aid, Estonia / Arbeitsgemeinschaft Regenwald & Artenschutz (ARA), Germany / PowerShift e.V., Germany / Robin Wood, Germany / Forum Ökologie & Papier, Germany / Envol Vert, Europe / Sinergia Animal, Austria / Planète Amazone, France / Canopée, France / Forests of the World, Denmark / EcoNexus, UK / Alliance of Mother Nature’s Guardians, international / Friends of the Earth Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bosnia and Herzegovina / Réseau Brésilien pour la Démocratie au Brésil (RED.Br), France / Friends of the Earth Finland, Finland / Comité de solidarité avec les Indiens des Amériques (CSIA-Nitassinan), France / Amazon Watch, USA / Coalition Carnival for Amazonia, Poland / Ecologistas en Acción, Spain. Ending the EU’s role in the assault on the Amazon April 2019 | Page 2 of 8 A time to act But rather than continuing to disregard the significant environmental and social costs of its trade with Brazil, the EU A new reality has unfolded in Brazil in the 100 days must take immediate specific steps to end its complicity in since Jair Bolsonaro became leader of the world’s this growing calamity, including the following: fourth largest democracy. ● Incursions by armed invaders on Indigenous The EU needs new laws to guarantee that neither products sold in the EU, nor the financial markets Peoples’ lands have surged. underpinning them, are destroying the planet’s An assault on the country’s environmental forests and driving land grabs and other human protections is underway. rights abuses. And the country’s extraordinarily powerful ● The Mercosur/EU negotiations for a Free agribusiness lobby now has even more political Trade Agreement must be suspended until Brazil clout. publicly renews its commitment to the Paris Climate Agreement. In addition, the trade deal’s Sustainability Impact Assessment must be publicly In January 2019, deforestation in the Amazon reportedly released and its findings taken into account before rose by 54 per cent compared to the same period in 2018. negotiations continue. Finally, the deal must include The same month, Bolsonaro’s provisional measure to put binding, enforceable provisions to end deforestation, indigenous lands under the jurisdiction of the agriculture respect customary tenure rights, and implement the ministry paved the way for powerful cattle ranching and Paris Climate Agreement. soy interests to accelerate their sweep through the world’s largest tropical forest, as well as Brazil’s other ecologically ● The European Commission should specify how it precious biomes. Their destruction has significant global plans to respond to the challenges presented by the ramifications, including acceleration of climate change... Bolsonaro administration, including ensuring human rights are respected. The European External Action The EU bears some measure of responsibility for Service (EEAS) should strengthen the implementation this. of the EU Action Plan on Human Rights and The EU and Brazil are deeply economically entwined. The EU Democracy and include more proactive consultation is the second largest market for Brazil’s soy and a significant with Brazilian civil society organisations. The EU importer of Brazilian beef. should also monitor and respond to human rights violations and strengthen human rights defenders’ These economic ties will be strengthened with the signing of protection mechanisms. For those most at risk, the major free trade deal that the EU is negotiating with the including indigenous Peoples and environmental Mercosur bloc, of which Brazil is the largest member. defenders, the EU should provide direct, urgent support where required, including through political Indigenous land rights protest in Brazil, February 2019 representations. Photo: APIB Facebook Ending the EU’s role in the assault on the Amazon April 2019 | Page 3 of 8 The European Union is the world’s largest single market. It’s The ‘Trump of the Tropics’ plays to Brazil’s second largest trading partner. And it is currently in his audience the throes of negotiating a comprehensive free trade deal with the Mercosur trading bloc, of which Brazil is the largest When Jair Bolsonaro defied expectations to win Brazil’s and most powerful member. presidential election last October, there was a long trail of outlandish comments from his 27 years on the extremist For these reasons alone, the EU is well placed to exert the fringes of Brazilian political life for the world’s media to pick kind of demand-side pressures that could act as a brake on over. Bolsonaro. The events which have unfolded at a dizzying pace in Brazil in the first months of his presidency demand These included incendiary statements against indigenous nothing less. people, women, gay and black people, and quotes in favour of torture and Brazil’s former dictatorship. His ‘Trump of the Tropics’ sobriquet therefore seemed apt. The EU is currently in the throes of negotiating a Yet while both men assumed power on the back of populist comprehensive free trade deal with the Mercosur anti-establishment rage, they operate in very different trading bloc, of which Brazil is the largest and contexts. Trump has the backing of the Republican party, most powerful member. Bolsonaro had no such institutional support. Instead, his authority rests on a core constituency that threatens Brazil’s rainforests, savannahs and Indigenous Peoples. A new reality In 2017, agribusiness was responsible for 23 per cent of the country’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP). It was this sector’s Even before Bolsonaro assumed power, the Articulação dos support which helped propel Bolsonaro to the presidency, Povos Indígenas do Brasil (APIB), which represents more than and which he is now dependent on – in the shape of the 300 Brazilian indigenous groups, reported an increase in farm caucus – to push his agenda through a fractured violence and intimidation. In 2017 alone, there were 57 land Congress, Brazil’s legislative body. and environmental defenders killed in Brazil, the highest number ever recorded in any country. Meanwhile, initial Their aim, overwhelmingly, is to strip back the – already figures showed that in the three-month electoral season, deficient – environmental and human rights safeguards deforestation rose almost 50 per cent in the Amazon, mostly restraining cattle ranchers and soy producers (as well as as a result of converting forest to pasture. logging and mining interests), sweeping through the Amazon, and Brazil’s other ecologically precious areas. And in the 100 days since Bolsonaro’s inauguration on January 1, 2019, the dread many felt at the prospect of his But at what cost to Brazilian business? victory, has proved to be justified. Do consumers in other countries really want to buy goods On the first day of his presidency, Bolsonaro issued a which have driven land grabs or other human rights abuses provisional measure transferring responsibility for the in Brazil? Do they want to be complicit in the razing of “identification, delimitation, demarcation and registration tropical forests, which pumps huge amounts of greenhouse of lands traditionally occupied by indigenous people” from gases into the atmosphere and accelerates climate Brazil’s National Indian Foundation, FUNAI, to the Ministry of breakdown? The answer, surely, is no. Agriculture: news which delighted his agribusiness backers. In which case, Brazil’s international trading partners could Two days later, Bolsonaro approvingly tweeted a clip of one start looking elsewhere for some of their key agricultural of his ministers saying that the United Nations Declaration imports, thereby damaging Brazil’s economy. on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples was “treasonous” and that many existing indigenous lands were based on “For a country that has become an agricultural superpower, fraudulent documents. exporting massive amounts of soybeans and beef, the loss of even a small part of these markets translates to millions [of On January 14, Ricardo Salles, Brazil’s new environment dollars],” as one commentator points out. minister – who has called the debate around climate change “innocuous” and claimed that many environmental fines Ending the EU’s role in the assault on the Amazon April 2019 | Page 4 of 8 are “ideological” – suspended agreements and partnerships indigenous healthcare, leading to the dismantling of the between the Ministry of Environment (MMA) and civil society Special Secretariat for Indigenous Health (SESAI), which was groups for 90 days in order to re-evaluate them. The local acquired by the Indigenous Peoples of Brazil in 2010 with O Globo newspaper said this sounded “like a declaration of great difficulty in order to effectively take into account their war on NGOs [non-governmental organisations] dedicated cultural, religious and specific needs. to conservation”. And on March 4 – while Brazilians were swept up in the joys On the same day, Salles told Latin America’s largest of carnival – Admiral Bento Albuquerque, the new Mines real-estate trade union, Secovi, that he wanted to make the and Energy Minister, announced plans to allow