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The clouds of smoke reached São Paulo, which is thousands of kilometers south of the Amazon. More than 70,000 fire starts have occurred since January in the green lung of the planet, double last year. In July, according to the Brazilian National Institute of Space Research, the number has even increased by 83% compared to 2018. And while the forest burns, experts point to the deforestation led by the president elected last October, Jair Bolsonaro.
Soy and gold to boost the economy
According to specialists, these fires are caused in particular by the strategy of burning the forest to transform it into farmland, or cultivable area, and thus fertile ground for the economy. "Today, the government of Jair Bolsonaro wants to promote the exploitation of soybeans and the farm more generally," says Europe 1 specialist political scientist of Latin America, Gaspard Estrada.
The expert also quotes the ore and in particular "the gold, which is in the north, in the state of Roraima, on the border with French Guiana". For Gaspard Estrada, there is no doubt that the policy is in place: "It is the Brazilian state that encourages this deforestation to take place, and that is what worries the whole world."
Bolsonaro nicknamed "captain chainsaw"
The political scientist sees in the diversion of President Bolsonaro, who said his "strong suspicions" of the involvement of NGOs in "arson" aimed at overthrowing him, a sign of his total neglect of the ecological issue in his country. Even conservative circles, close to agricultural lobbies, worried about it in a manifesto published a few days ago in Brazil, denouncing the strategy of their president, now nicknamed "chainsaw captain".