Survey: Most Catholics Disagree With Bolsonaro’s Positions on Amazon

RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – Seven out of ten Brazilian Catholics believe preserving the Amazon is very important, and 85 percent said they agree that attacking the Amazon is a sin.

This is the result of a survey conducted by the Ideia Big Data institute to assess the position of the catholic faithful on policies for the region, on the occasion of the Synod of Bishops for the Amazon, convened by Pope Francis, which began this Sunday, October 6th.

The survey, commissioned by the NGOs WWF-Brazil, Instituto Clima e Sociedade (iCS) and Movimento Católico Global pelo Clima (GCCM), interviewed 1,502 Catholics throughout Brazil in early June and also surveyed the opinion of this portion of the population on the actions of Bolsonaro’s management of the environmental area.

The survey, obtained exclusively by Estado newspaper, is to be released on Monday, October 7th.

According to the survey, 68 percent said preserving the Amazon is important for the country’s growth because national development depends on a protected environment, ten percent said it was irrelevant to the country’s economic growth and a further ten percent said that environmental preservation hinders growth.

Despite being conducted nearly two months before the international crisis that was triggered by criticism from the federal government to data that showed high deforestation and as a result of the increase in forest fires in the region, the survey showed that 29 percent of Catholics believe the President’s performance in this area is unsatisfactory and 12 percent as very bad.

A further 30 percent of Catholics rated it as fair and 22 percent as excellent or good.

Over half of the Catholics interviewed (52 percent) said they believe that deforestation in the Amazon is the greatest threat to nature, surmounting issues such as pollution of rivers and seas, which is viewed as the main threat by 19 percent of respondents.

In the survey, respondents were asked to assess President Bolsonaro’s actions or statements in the environmental area. Most were against the concept of ending environmental fines for those who cause deforestation (75 percent) and disagreed with the undermining of IBAMA (73 percent).

Catholics are also opposed to the reduction of indigenous reserves (67 percent) and do not agree with the rejection of INPE’s data on deforestation in the Amazon (63 percent). One-half of respondents also disagreed with the statement that Brazil is the country that most preserves the environment in the world.

When asked which sources of information they deemed reliable about the Amazon, 87 percent said they trusted what Pope Francis said on the issue; 71 percent said they trusted the UN, 67 percent the NGOs and 60 percent the press.

In relation to the Brazilian government, 49 percent of respondents said they did not trust the government when it quoted data on the Amazon rainforest.

Igor Bastos, GCCM’s coordinator for Portuguese-speaking countries, said the data may be viewed as an indicator that the majority of the Catholic population supports Francis’ position on concern for the Amazon. “We can see that this is a minority, although loud, that is against the Synod,” he says.

He believes that since the survey was conducted before the peak of the Amazon crisis, it is even more accurate to what the population believes.

“These are people who have not suffered the effects of international turmoil. Maybe if the research had been conducted later, the result would have been even more negative for the government,” he says.

According to Alice Amorim, iCS policy and engagement coordinator, the research suggests that Catholics do not regard economic development as being incompatible with the protection of nature.

“Even though the Catholic population is traditionally more related to a conservative stance, this does not necessarily correlate with a lack of concern for the environment or endorsement of the government’s environmental policies,” he adds.

Source: Estadão Conteúdo