The Minister of the Environment, Joaquim Alvaro Pereira Leite, said this Wednesday (6) that the data from May this year on fires do not reflect the reality of the government. During this period, the Brazilian Amazon had the worst number of fires since 2004, while the Cerrado also had a record for the month.
The minister was heard at the Financial Inspection and Control Commission of the Chamber of Deputies.
Leite was questioned by deputies about the fires in Brazil, based on reports in the press. Deputy Leo de Brito (PT-AC) quoted a text from the Sheet which points to worse numbers of the minister in relation to his predecessor, Ricardo Salles.
“I’m going to start a little about the data. I think it’s important to remember that measuring the management by a data from the month of May of fires from the reports that were cited here does not reflect the reality of the federal government’s action. The federal government has been stricter in the control of forest products”, said Leite.
He then listed actions by the ministry to improve the structure of inspection bodies, such as IBAMA (Brazilian Institute for the Environment and Renewable Natural Resources) and ICMBio (Chico Mendes Institute for Biodiversity Conservation). Among the measures are the purchase of tractors, pickup trucks, ballistic vests, hiring of helicopters.
For Leite, the Bolsonaro government’s focus on climate change has to be on renewable energy. He said the country is responsible for 2.9% of global greenhouse gas emissions and about 0.8% of deforestation.
Deputy Elias Vaz (PSB-GO) even questioned the minister about the budget applied by the portfolio. According to data from the Siop (Integrated Budget Planning System), presented by the parliamentarian, only 15.88% of the resources earmarked for fire control in priority areas were liquidated in 2022.
Leite, however, did not comment specifically on this budget line. He said there can be a difference between what was committed and what was done.
Such as Sheet showed, Leite’s more discreet profile managed to soften the negative news for the government in this area, but, in practice, the minister maintained the dismantling agenda led by Bolsonaro.
In the first six months of this year, the Amazon had almost 8,000 fires detected by the satellites of the National Institute for Space Research. This is an increase of 16% compared to the same period in 2021, when Salles was still a minister.
Studies on the sector, however, show a worsening in the situation on several fronts. The number of fires in the Amazon and in the cerrado, for example, is 20% higher this year compared to the same period in 2021, when Salles was still the minister. The information is from Inpe (National Institute for Space Research).
Deforestation in the Atlantic Forest has grown even more and reached a level 66% higher in 2022 than last year, according to the NGO SOS Mata Atlântica.
Another negative data concerns areas with deforestation alerts in the Amazon, which broke a record in April, according to Inpe’s Deter, a program by the agency that triggers warnings of occurrences of this nature and which has the function of assisting inspection actions. environmental. In all, 1,012.5 km² of forest were cut down.
