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November 18, 2020Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro has threatened to publish "in the next few days" a list of countries that import illegal wood from the Brazilian Amazon, including some very critical of its environmental position.



"In the next few days we will reveal the countries that illegally imported wood from the Amazon, and some of these countries are my government's most severe critics of that Amazon region," he told the virtual summit of the emerging power group BRICS.



"I think that after this revelation that affects everyone - why not say it - in the world, this practice will decrease a lot in our region", he added before the leaders of the entity formed by Brazil with Russia, India, China and South Africa.



Bolsonaro, who on other occasions has criticized the apparent hypocrisy of his critics, said it will be possible to obtain such information thanks to a method developed by the Federal Police of Brazil (PF) to identify the DNA of the wood and determine its origin.



According to the Brazilian press, the president based his threat on a PF operation, which began in 2017, in which wood illegally harvested from the Amazon was seized and destined, among other things, to companies in Germany, Belgium, France, Holland and the United Kingdom.



Environmental experts and NGOs say the Bolsonaro government has weakened environmental control agencies and that its speech in favor of mining in protected areas promotes deforestation and forest fires, with record levels in the Amazon and Pantanal.



The NGO Greenpeace said on Twitter yesterday that the government eliminated the Brazilian Institute for the Environment (Ibama) inspections on wood exports in February, "favoring the marketing of illegal wood."



In 2019, his first year in office, Bolsonaro received a wave of international criticism, led by French President Emmanuel Macron, for the alarming increase in fires in the world's largest tropical forest.



Two weeks ago, Vice President Hamilton Mourao toured the Amazon with ambassadors from eight countries, including delegates from Germany and France, in an effort to improve the government's image.