COP26: Brazil’s Bolsonaro will not attend conference because “everyone would throw stones at him”

RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro will not attend the UN climate summit (COP26) because “everyone would throw stones at him,” said Vice President Hamilton Mourão on Friday (29).

“President Bolsonaro suffers a series of criticisms. So, he is not going to go to a place where everyone would throw stones at him. There will be a robust team there with the capacity to carry out a negotiation strategy,” Mourão, head of an intergovernmental council for the care of the Amazon, told reporters.

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In the last couple of years, deforestation and fires have devastated part of the planet’s most significant plant lung and have generated harsh criticism in much of the international community, which blames these phenomena on the aggressive development policies imposed by Bolsonaro in the Amazon region.

Mourão attributed the criticism of Bolsonaro’s policies to the fact that “most of the people who have an environmental conscience are from the left,” and the Brazilian government “is from the right.”

Thus, according to the vice president, “there is a political criticism embedded in that,” and in addition, “there is the economic issue, which always seeks a barrier in relation to the thriving agriculture” of Brazil.

Bolsonaro arrived this Friday in Rome to attend the G20 Summit, but unlike other leaders of that group, he will not travel to Glasgow for COP26 and will remain in Italy until Tuesday.

This week, the leader attributed his decision not to attend COP26 to a “government strategy” and assured that Brazil would be “very well represented” by his Minister of the Environment, Joaquim Leite, who will head the delegation.