Brazil’s VP says he is to blame for poor coordination in fighting deforestation

RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – Brazil’s Vice-president and coordinator of CNAL (National Council for the Legal Amazon), Hamilton Mourão, has  said he is to blame for Brazil’s failure in fighting deforestation.

Last week, data from Prodes (Project for Satellite Monitoring of Deforestation in the Legal Amazon), of INPE (National Institute for Space Research), revealed a new deforestation record for the month of October.

“If you want someone to blame, it’s me. I’m not going to say it was Minister A, B, or C. I failed to coordinate and integrate it in a way that it would work,” the vice-president told journalists after the last meeting of the CNAL in 2021, at the Foreign Ministry, on Tuesday, November 23.

“It only began to work in the last phase of the operation, when Sumaúma happened, and then the group realized the need to talk effectively with each other, to strip away their prejudices. Because each one has their own prejudices in relation to the other, to the other’s way of working, and from then on there was synergy in the work,” he continued.

Mourão heads the Amazon Council, the structure responsible for coordinating preservation efforts in the biome, but which is experiencing a process of dissolution.

Ministers Joaquim Leite (Environment) and Anderson Torres (Justice), who currently coordinate the main measures to fight deforestation, were not present at the meeting, given that the military presence in the region was not extended in October.

Mourão said that Minister Leite is “the face of the fight against deforestation,” but minimized the absences, alleging that those technically responsible for coordinating the activities in the Ministries were present.

The militarization of the fight against environmental crimes lasted 16 of the 34 months of the Bolsonaro government, costing R$550 (US$98) million to public coffers and failed to reduce deforestation rates in the Amazon.

In all, there were three GLOs (Law and Order Assurance Operations), whose presidential decrees legally endorsed 3 military intervention operations: Verde Brasil, Verde Brasil 2 and Samaúma. The vice-president even announced the extension of the latter, which did not materialize.

Mourão’s statements come after 3 Armed Forces interventions in the region and the fact that environmental crime continues at alarming levels. Data from Prodes show that in October there was record deforestation, with an increase of 22% compared to the previous year.

INPE completed the data on October 27 and entered the report in the federal government’s electronic information system on the same day, but it was only released on Thursday, November 18, after the COP26, the UN conference on climate change held in Glasgow, Scotland, between October 31 and November 13.

The vice-president also said that of the 13,235 km2 between August 2020 and July 2021 (the highest rate since 2006), about 60% corresponds to illegal deforestation. The data were not disclosed by Ministries or enforcement agencies.

“Around 8,100 km2 are definitely considered illegal and the remainder, as it was done in private areas, where there was authorization to suppress the vegetation, are considered legal deforestation,” the vice-president said.

However, he conceded that the illegally deforested area is “tremendous.”

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