By Cristyan Costa
Brazilian President Lula said that the Amazon is not only ours.
“Although Brazil is the sovereign owner of part of the Amazon territory, we have to open it for science from all over the world to help research,” he said during an interview with the Brazilian Communication Company’s Voz do Brasil program on Monday 10.
In addition, he said that the biome has to be “scientifically explored, with the participation of the whole world.”
The president did not explain how this would work in practice, should it come out of the paper.
“I don’t want to turn the Amazon into a sanctuary of humanity because 28 million people live there and want to eat, drink, have cars, and have access to material goods,” he observed.
Lula’s speech contradicts a statement he made while in detention.
Through an aide, he published a tweet criticizing Bolsonaro’s “surrenderist” policy that would be affecting the “greatest heritage of the country.”
“Defending the Amazon is an urgent issue and a matter of national sovereignty,” he said.
“The forest belongs to the Brazilian people and is not hostage to the perversions of this government.”
During the four years of Bolsonaro’s government, the then-president received accusations of “surrenderism.”
With information from Revista Oeste