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2019, year I of Jair Bolsonaro in power in Brazil. It was also a particularly difficult year on the environmental front, with in particular an increase in deforestation.
From our correspondent in Sao Paulo,
When we think of Brazil and the environment, we first think of the Amazon. Several alerts have been launched this year, but Jair Bolsonaro is very skeptical when it comes to issues related to climate change.
Above all, he wants to develop the region through economic activities - animal husbandry, mining, etc. His government had a very permissive attitude: the supervisory bodies had been weakened, and the repression of crimes against the environment had diminished.
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The first alert came when the National Space Research Institute (INPE), an official body, reported a sharp increase in deforestation in June. A trend that continued thereafter.
Official deforestation figures show a 30% increase over 12 months until July, i.e. before the big wave of forest fires. Over the first 11 months of 2019, provisional figures from the INPE show an increase in deforestation of 84%.
Faced with official data presented to it in June, the government reacted very badly. The head of state considered that the disclosure of these figures damaged the country's image.
In fact, in his military vision, everything related to the Amazon is a question of sovereignty. INPE President Ricardo Galvao was summoned by Jair Bolsonaro, and a few days later, he resigned.
But Mr. Galvao did not question the figures of deforestation, and the most funny in history is that the man who stood up to Jair Bolsonaro was chosen by the journal Nature as the one of the ten scientists of the year in the world.
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As soon as something upsets him, Mr. Bolsonaro accuses the NGOs. In August, a large wave of fires broke out in the Amazon, and televisions around the world broadcast alarmist images and messages.
But President Bolsonaro once again laid an accusing finger against the NGOs, which themselves allegedly set the forest on fire. A few days ago, four young volunteer firefighters from an NGO in Para State were charged with allegedly setting off a forest fire.
The controversy has also taken an international dimension, through a series of invective between presidents Bolsonaro and Macron, after the latter, in a G7 meeting, spoke of " an international crisis ", and accused his counterpart of having lied to him.
A controversy which then degenerated on social networks, and caused a real quarrel between Paris and Brasilia. Germany, and especially Norway, have at the same time suspended their funding to a major sustainable development project, the Amazon Fund.
It should be noted that Jair Bolsonaro did not have very sympathetic words towards Greta Thunberg, the Swedish teenager become a world symbol of the ecological struggle. He indeed called her a " kid ".
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