“If Lula doesn’t win, it’s going to be ugly for you.” The message was sent last week to a leader of the Uru-Eu-Wau-Wau Indigenous Land, in northern Rondônia, amid a series of invasion threats to the territory, demarcated in 1991.
“It’s a lot of land for a few Indians, it’s going to be called César farm”, says the author of the texts, who does not respond to the interlocutor’s requests to identify himself. On the social network where he exchanges messages, he uses the name of Júlio César and even mentions the rural area of Colina, about 20 km from the indigenous land. “See you soon, indigenous brother, it’s just a conversation,” he says.
The day after the exchange of messages to which the Sheet had access, indigenous people reported threats suffered at a gas station in the region and also that a house was set on fire in one of the villages.
According to residents, environmentalists and researchers, the explanation for the increase in the offensive by land grabbers, loggers and prospectors in recent months reflects the search to take advantage of what could be the last year of the Bolsonaro government (PL), which it supervised, according to MapBiomas. , less than 3% of deforestation alerts in the country.
In the first five months of this year, deforestation in the Amazon was 7.9% higher than in the same period last year, according to data from Inpe (National Institute for Space Research). As the beginning of the year comprises the rainy season, which is unfavorable for the opening of land, the tendency is for this difference to widen between June and September.
According to data from Imazon (Instituto do Homem e Meio Ambiente da Amazônia), obtained through the SAD (Deforestation Alert System), in 2022 the Amazon had the five worst months in the period from January to May of the last 15 years, with devastation of 3,360 km² —8.8% higher than the same period in 2021.
In Rondônia, the increase in deforestation from January to May this year was 45.6% compared to 2021.
“This is certainly an effect of Bolsonaro’s last year, a kind of farewell if he doesn’t get reelected,” says Ivaneide Cardozo, an indigenist who heads the Kanindé Ethnoenvironmental Defense Association in Rondônia.
In Santarém (PA), the increase in predatory exploitation has been noticed since January, when the Tapajós River changed the color of its waters, usually crystalline, due to the mud raised by the massive action of mining.
“We realize that people are trying to make the most of it, in doubt about what the next year will be like, if the government is going to change, if Congress is going to change, for all kinds of evil”, says Caetano Scannavino, coordinator of the Health and Alegria, based in Santarém.
Atypically, the rise in deforestation this year represents a distortion of the classic electoral effect. The pattern observed by scientific studies points to an increase in deforestation during municipal election periods, due to incentives from local authorities to deforesters in exchange for mobilizing votes and financing campaigns.
A study by USP (University of São Paulo) published last year in the scientific journal Conservation Letters showed that, between 1991 and 2014, the years of general elections saw additional deforestation of 3,652 hectares. The effect was greater in municipal elections, when the average increase was 4,409 hectares.
In the Amazon, deforestation in years of municipal elections rose by an average of 8% to 10% in municipalities where mayors were running for reelection, according to a survey carried out between 2002 and 2012 and published in 2018 in the scientific journal Environmental Economics and Management.
The study, conducted by Clark University (USA), also pointed to the “corruption effect”.
“Municipalities with highly corrupt mayors running for reelection have approximately 50% more deforestation in election periods compared to municipalities without a reelection candidate,” the survey states.
Incentives given by governments running for re-election include extending credit and relaxing licensing requirements for the agriculture, mining and real estate sectors, as well as reducing forest protection through downgrading, downsizing and even downgrading of protected areas. It is also common, according to the USP study, to reduce surveillance and funding by inspection agencies.
Although the two surveys used complex formulas to identify the electoral effect on deforestation according to several variables, the cyclical phenomenon is also notable, in the case of the Amazon, from the data aggregated across the region by Prodes (a monitoring system for the inpe).
The annual graph of deforestation in the Amazon shows a pattern of growth in municipal election years. The second highest rate in the historical series —27,800 km² — occurred in an election year, 2004.
The exception was 2012, when, despite the elections, the lowest deforestation rate since the beginning of monitoring was recorded: 4,600 km².
“This was because we were able to implement the second cycle of the PPCDAm, the plan to prevent and control deforestation in the Amazon”, explains André Lima, former director of policies for the Amazon at the Ministry of the Environment and current consultant for the Democracy and Sustainability Institute.
In general election years, however, there is no clear pattern in the analysis of Prodes data. The exception that stands out in the graph is the 2018 election, which elected President Jair Bolsonaro. That year, deforestation grew from 7,500 km² to 9,700 km².
In 2022, however, according to experts, the incentive to deforestation is no longer linked to a promise of facilitating the activity in a next administration, but rather to taking advantage of the release already granted in the current management — and which can be lost if there is a change of government.
“The situation has gotten so bad that the environmental agenda has gained greater relevance and induced promises [de candidatos] in the opposite direction: to contain deforestation and stop the illegalities that were promised in the last election”, evaluates Malu Ribeiro, director of public policies at Fundação SOS Mata Atlântica.
She cites as an example the fact that governors of states with greater control over deforestation, such as Espírito Santo and São Paulo, traveled to the last UN climate change conference, COP26, held in November 2021 in Scotland.
“This is obvious: the governors put the environmental agenda on their electoral platforms and wanted to show abroad that their states do not have deforestation”, says Ribeiro. “When we released the data from the last atlas of the Atlantic Forest, the secretaries wanted to know beforehand how their states figured. They show commitment”, he adds.
Unlike the Legal Amazon, in which federal agencies centralize the functions of combating deforestation, the responsibility for the conservation of the Atlantic Forest lies with state agencies.
The monitoring of the biome with monthly alerts, however, is recent and does not offer a comparative basis between the first months of 2022 and the same period of previous years.
“Deforestation has certainly worsened this year, but from 2018 onwards there has been a shock and it has surpassed this electoral phenomenon”, says Patricia Ruggiero, PhD in Ecology at USP and co-author of the study focused on the Atlantic Forest.
“There was a downfall of environmental policies and also the signaling by political leaders. It may be that there is an overlap of the two factors, but we will check it later, in the continuation of the research”, she says.
Another component that explains the effect of elections on deforestation rates is the political convergence between local, regional and federal powers.
“Political alignment can facilitate the implementation of policies, including deregulation and permissions that can directly influence deforestation,” says the USP study. The research identified that, in years of general elections, deforestation is favored in regions under pressure whose state governments align with the federal one.
Malu Ribeiro points out that the increase in deforestation in the Atlantic Forest has been greater in recent years in states allied with Bolsonaro. “This happened even in states that are already suffering the consequences of deforestation, such as Paraná, which is facing a water crisis”, she highlights. Paraná is governed by Ratinho Junior (PSD), a pre-candidate for reelection.
In 2020, an action by Faep (Federation of Agriculture of the State of Paraná) tried to annul the application of the Atlantic Forest Law, which would result in amnesty for deforesters in the biome. The action was supported by an order from the Ministry of the Environment – which backed down after a demonstration by the Public Ministry.
When questioned, the Ministry of the Environment did not comment on the relationship between the increase in deforestation and the election year, but highlighted that Inpe’s Deter system registered a rate 35% lower in May than in the same month last year.
“It should be noted that the data deal with alerts for inspection purposes and that the area disclosed is an estimate”, completes the note.
The recommendation of Inpe technicians is that the data from the Deter system be compared between periods of at least three months, since cloud cover can generate lower numbers in one month, and higher in the following month, when deforestation is seen by satellites.
“The government has made great efforts to combat environmental crimes,” says the note, which cites partnerships between the ministry and other federal government agencies and the creation of a working group with the United States.
The Planeta em Transe project is supported by the Open Society Foundations.
