Austrian ex-Uber boss founds NGO that charges Brazil’s Jair Bolsonaro at International Criminal Court

RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – “Crimes against the environment are crimes against humanity”: that’s the bottom line rationale a group of climate and legal experts around Austrians Johannes Wesemann (ex-Uber boss in Austria) and Wolfram Proksch (a lawyer in Vienna) is using to go before the International Criminal Court (ICC) in The Hague.

On Tuesday, AllRise, an environmental NGO from Austria recently founded by Wesemann, officially filed charges against Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro at the International Criminal Court (ICC) in The Hague.

“We are filing charges against Jair Bolsonaro for crimes against humanity,” reads a statement from the new NGO AllRise NGO. “The Amazon is the lungs of our planet, and its destruction affects us all. In our complaint, we present evidence that shows how Bolsonaro’s actions are directly linked to the negative impacts of climate change around the world.”

The complaint was written by Wesemann’s team, including Dr. Friederike Otto, one of the lead authors of the recently released global climate report (IPCC AR6). At AllRise, they estimate that emissions attributable to the Bolsonaro government will cause more than 180,000 heat-related deaths worldwide over the next 80 years.

The International Criminal Court is now being asked to investigate how Bolsonaro’s government is systematically abolishing and undermining laws and authorities designed to protect the Amazon, how Bolsonaro is driving rainforest deforestation and the CO2 emissions that Amazon forest fires are causing. You can read the entire complaint, which runs 286 pages, here.

POWERFUL SUPPORT

AllRise is supported by, among others, Deutsche Umwelthilfe (DUH – German Environmental Aid). This organization caused a sensation at the beginning of the year when its complaint against the German climate protection law was upheld by the highest judges in the German city of Karlsruhe.

“Bolsonaro and his government in Brazil are not willing to stop breaking international environmental law and human rights. As a result, the German government had to tighten the law significantly. Therefore we support the initiative to finally pull the main responsible person to accountability”, in addition, Sascha Mueller-Kraenner, federal managing director of the DUH, is quoted.

Parallel to the 286-page statement of claim, the NGO campaign “The Planet vs. Bolsonaro” was launched on Tuesday: “A crime against nature is a crime against humanity,” is the tenor of the campaign – and that Bolsonaro should be held accountable.

According to the NGO, the deliberate destruction of the rainforest in the Brazilian Amazon has reached record levels. Approximately 4,000 km2/year of the total area deforested in the Brazilian Amazon is attributed to the Bolsonaro government.

“We have been fighting for many years to preserve the rainforest in Brazil: for the climate, for species protection, and against a criminal system whose products are also traded here in Europe, whether as leather for car seats or soy for the animal feed industry. Under Bolsonaro’s government, the monthly deforestation rate has increased by up to 88 percent. The consequences in Brazil and worldwide are devastating,” says Sascha Müller-Kraenner.

Greenhouse gas emissions from burning and industrial cattle ranching in the Amazon are now higher than the total annual emissions of Italy or Spain, he said.

WHO IS JOHANNES WESEMANN?

Johannes Wesemann grew up in Vienna and Hong Kong, studied business administration at the Vienna University of Economics and Business Administration, earned his first professional spurs in Singapore, founded his first company at 20, and then settled professionally in Vienna.

This was followed by a stint at an advertising & design agency. In 2003, he founded Emergy, an internationalization boutique that planned and implemented the expansion of German-speaking companies into Asia and Africa.

In 2014 he became general manager of Uber Austria and built up the US company in Vienna. In 2016 he founded with third parties the company Strudelund that builds digital companies on behalf of corporations and start-ups.

In his ‘2nd life’, Johannes Wesemann lives on theater stages. There he gives speeches, reads texts, and plays with language, his voice, and the audience.