Ricardo Salles left, Joaquim Leite joined, and almost nothing has changed in the much-criticized environmental governance of the Jair Bolsonaro (PL) government, say environmental experts.
“Joaquim’s entry is a change of packaging”, summarizes Marcio Astrini, executive secretary of the Climate Observatory, a network that brings together dozens of environmental research institutions and civil society.
In the same vein, Natalie Unterstell, a master in public administration from Harvard University (USA) and coordinator of Politics for Integer, says: “Everything changes for everything to stay as it is”, referring to a phrase from the book “The Leopard”, by Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa.
The central point, experts say, is that the ministers are following the environmental policy dictated by Bolsonaro. “The real Minister of the Environment is Bolsonaro”, says Astrini. “In the ministry, a sign of improvement would be crowned with dismissal. If you improve environmental management, you will be fired.”
Under Leite, low levels of environmental fines remain, while there are high rates of deforestation. The weakening of the ministry and agencies such as Ibama and ICMBio also remain, say the experts heard by the report.
Salles asked to leave the government at a time when he was being investigated by the Federal Supreme Court (STF) for an operation by the Federal Police that investigated alleged favoritism to businessmen in the wood sector through changes in rules with the aim of regularizing seized cargo. abroad.
The former minister was also the subject of an inquiry that investigates his role in the investigation of the largest seizure of wood in Brazil. Salles took the side of the loggers.​
According to Astrini, Salles’ departure had nothing to do with a possible poor environmental performance. “The performance was to Bolsonaro’s satisfaction. If the PF hadn’t made the complaint to the Supreme Court, he would have been the minister until today.”
Leite is close to Salles and, even shortly after the change of ministers, it was believed that the change would not actually bring about changes.
“The big issue is that from the point of view of orientation, of policy, there has been no change. The ministry continues to be far short of the needs of a Ministry of the Environment in Brazil, a narrow-minded ministry with little protagonism and very little technical knowledge. , despite the experienced technical staff”, says Adriana Ramos, political advisor and socio-environmental law at ISA (Instituto Socioambiental). “The minister doesn’t seem to enjoy this knowledge.”
According to the experts consulted, the continuity of the environmental management model is clear when it is seen that the measures put in place by Salles are still in force. One of the main ones is the stoppage of the Amazon Fund, in which there are billions of reais that could be used for environmental preservation programs in the biome.
To reactivate it, it would be enough for the new minister to reconstitute the councils paralyzed by Salles. The former minister interrupted the fund’s activities because, according to him, problems were detected in the fund’s contracts with projects. A few months later, Salles was already saying that negotiations to resume the fund were at a standstill because there was a Brazilian desire for the federal government to take precedence in the decision-making process on the destination of the money.
At the same time, Norway and Germany were surprised by the situation and stated that they were satisfied with the functioning of the fund, which was undergoing international audits.
Despite the administrative similarity, there is a visible difference between them. Salles had a combative, bolder and ironic stance, both in interviews and on social media. Leite, on the other hand, is more discreet and is little exposed on social media.
Unterstell believes that Leite’s entry may have been an attempt to lighten the country’s environmental image.
“They thought that Joaquim Leite was an advertising remedy and that, with a less aggressive speech, they would reduce criticism of Brazil”, says the coordinator of Politics for Integer. “They failed with that strategy.”
Brazil continues to be viewed with concern, due to the high levels of deforestation in the Amazon, by the foreign market.
“One was more histrionic and more political, with a more proactive public presence. And the other with a virtually non-existent public presence,” says Ramos.
At COP26, the United Nations Conference on Climate Change, in the United Kingdom, Joaquim Leite’s passing was pale, says Unterstell. Brazil even went to the COP when deforestation data in the Amazon had already been computed by Inpe (National Institute for Space Research), but they were not made public.
If the change in minister did not actually bring about changes, the changes in the leadership of the Legislative did, says Suely Araujo, a senior specialist in public policies at the Climate Observatory and former president of IBAMA.
According to Araujo, the environmental “cattle” did not travel in the first years of government, due to the lack of governmental base in the Legislative, which changes with the alliance with the center. “Arthur Lira stopped promoting deliberations, which involve debate, and he only promotes votes with texts that appear out of nowhere.”
The specialist cites as an example the PL (Bill) 6299/2002, which was included for voting on an emergency basis. The project, which changes rules related to pesticides, was barred.
According to Araujo, who has followed the Legislature for more than two decades, an anti-environmental stance is very strong, especially in the Chamber, of deconstructing environmental policy, “opposed by the president of the Chamber and the leaders who support him, the majority governmental”.
The Climate Observatory specialist says that 2022 tends to be a year with even more judicialization of environmental issues, something that has already occurred in 2021, including a decision by the STF, in December, which restored protection to mangroves and sandbanks, which had changed by a decision by Conama (National Council for the Environment) in 2020, which, at that time, was chaired by former Minister of the Environment Ricardo Salles.
A leaf contacted the Ministry of the Environment for comment, but, until the publication of this report, there was no response.
wanted by leaf, Arthur Lira’s adviser stated that it “refutes any attempt to put on the president the label of anti-environmentalist”.
“All the approved agendas are guided by a decision of the college of leaders and not by the president’s unilateral decision. ), which establishes the Brazilian Emissions Reduction Market (MBRE), in order to regulate the purchase and sale of carbon credits in the country”, said the press office of the president of the Chamber, in a note.
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