The environmental goals announced by Brazil at COP26 (the UN climate conference) were publicly praised by the US government. However, for Christian Poirier, this American posture can in practice lead to an increase in deforestation.
“It’s absurd John Kerry [enviado especial do da Casa Branca] highlight meaningless commitments, as [Jair] Bolsonaro will legalize deforestation that is now considered illegal. This casts a smokescreen over the world’s understanding of what is actually happening in the field and does a disservice,” says the program director of Amazon Watch, a US-based NGO that fights deforestation around the world.
Poirier points out that two bills in the Brazilian Congress seek to change the understanding of what illegal deforestation is. With that, in his analysis, more ways of felling trees would be tolerated, paving the way for more environmental destruction.
TO sheet, the director says he has little hope about the results of the COP, but that progress can be made if means are created to send more resources directly to indigenous peoples. He also criticizes the carbon neutrality model.
How do you assess the announcements made by the Brazilian government at the COP in relation to the Amazon? Brazil has pledged to eliminate only illegal deforestation. But at the same time, the government is working with the Brazilian Congress to basically change what is considered legal and illegal. So, they are going to make illegal deforestation legal through Congressional action, in PLs 490 and 3,722. They show the Bolsonaro government’s true intentions with regard to forest protection.
During his time in government, Bolsonaro cut the budget for studies and projects on climate change by 93%. And last year, while the rest of the world reduced its emissions because of the pandemic, Brazil’s greenhouse gas emissions increased by about 10% because of deforestation and subsequent fires. These are indicators that we cannot trust Bolsonaro’s words.
It should also be pointed out that what Brazil is committing to do had already been established in the Paris Agreement, and they are basically presenting the same numbers, which do not reflect the urgency of what we are seeing today. Its green growth program does not include explicit commitments to reduce deforestation. They did not offer a plan to protect the forest’s defenders, the indigenous people. Bolsonaro is simply trying to land as someone who cares about the weather,
Could this posture have consequences for Brazil? Will other countries be able to take measures that harm the country? There will be consequences for the Bolsonaro government’s behavior in the international arena and economic consequences, because people do not believe that this government will honor its word.
What happens in loco is being seen around the world. Brazil’s commodity investors and buyers, as well as political powerhouses, see the government’s false rhetoric on the one hand, and on the other, what really transpires from the crisis of immense proportions, and they are choosing to cut financial ties with the government. We see an outflow of capital from Brazil at this time, because it is not seen as a country that is a good investment, especially by more responsible investors.
As companies begin to institute environmental governance policies and standards, they will not buy Brazilian products because of the government’s stance. We have seen advertisements from a series of importers of Brazilian goods, such as meat, soy, wood and gold, who do not want to continue buying products related to the destruction of forests and the murder of environmental defenders.
Do you think that the US will be able to take measures in the future against countries that do not reach the proposed targets?The problem is that these commitments [assumidos pelos paÃses] are not mandatory. There may be political and economic consequences for governments that do not stick to what they have promised. However, I don’t have high hopes for what we’re hearing from the Biden government. O enviado especial John Kerry elogiou Bolsonaro no Twitter pelo compromisso de eliminar o desmatamento ilegal em sete anos. I understand that everyone wants to be positive, wants to show that real actions are being taken, but it is absurd for Kerry to highlight these meaningless commitments, as Bolsonaro will legalize deforestation that is now considered illegal. This casts a smokescreen on the world’s understanding of what is actually happening on the field and does the truth a disservice.
What are Amazon Watch and other international NGOs planning to do to convince countries to move forward in preserving the Amazon? We are a US based organization. Our role is to influence our own government to take action on the Bolsonaro government, which we consider a climate criminal. We put pressure on the Biden administration, the special envoy [John] Kerry to take action on this because they have done it [a questão ambiental] a centerpiece of its foreign policy.
After the Biden Climate Summit in April, we sought to push for action on indigenous land rights. We also seek to act with US economic actors, such as financial institutions, to adopt policies linked to indigenous rights and zero deforestation in their portfolios. [de investimento]. We are also working with US lawmakers, through actions such as the Forest Law, which would limit the US’s ability to import commodities with a risk of causing deforestation, not just from the Amazon.
How do you assess the COP results in general? I don’t have high hopes from what we’ve seen. It seems that the same dynamics are repeated, with very high and ambitious promises being made by world leaders. But in the case of promises about forests, we see a lot of inequalities in access, with people in the developing world lacking access to official decision-making spaces.
And we also see a kind of delay. The delay that world leaders have then had in taking meaningful action can be seen as a new form of climate denial. Delaying actions continually means that we will never see meaningful action. Let’s just move on to the 3°C increase [na média da temperatura global] no near future.
​​Could there be any real gain for the preservation of the Amazon? The COP can lead to the taking of significant measures on the protection of the Amazon, if they are followed up by governments and the private sector. For example, there are billions of dollars being pledged to help indigenous peoples in their territories and to support sustainable development. But the devil is in the details: we’ve seen these promises in the past. There were funds that never materialized or went into the wrong hands, without reaching the communities. Indigenous peoples are guardians of the forest, who are at the forefront of this war, being killed. More than a thousand have been murdered since the ratification of the Paris Agreement.
There are many organizations around the world saying: we need direct support, we don’t want intermediaries. We don’t want large nonprofit environmental organizations taking these resources and then passing them on dropwise to our communities. If the funds are delivered correctly, as well as the political and market commitments being made are met, there could be a significant shift in protecting the Amazon.
But we cannot see the adoption of false solutions, such as net zero [neutralidade de carbono]. It has been subverted by the private sector and government actors who want to use carbon offsets to continue polluting. If we have more mechanisms in this direction, it would be a complete failure to address the real needs of communities.
Why do you consider net zero a false solution? It is not necessarily a false solution, but the way it is being implemented is. It doesn’t matter if the original intent wasn’t for governments and corporations to use it as a “greenwashing” mechanism. In fact, we see large financial institutions and commodity importers and exporters using this mechanism as an opportunity to show that they are taking action on the climate when they are doing absolutely nothing. This has served to cover up the “business as usual” scenario.​
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Christian Poirier, 46
Born in San Francisco, California, he has a master’s degree in rural development from Sussex University (UK). Since 2009, he has been coordinating the program on actions in Brazil of the American NGO Amazon Watch. Before, he provided assistance to the MST (Landless Workers Movement) in Brazil and projects in West Africa.
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