The Brazilian delegation tried to dress up as a good girl at the climate summit in Glasgow. It raised the goal of cutting greenhouse gases in 2030 from 43% to 50% and signed a commitment by 96 countries to reduce methane by 30% in this decade and a declaration of good intentions on forests, with 124 nations.
But no: in this case, too, it was a coup. “Blow” in the sense of a swindle, deception, embezzlement, deception. Jair Bolsonaro has no intention of delivering on his promises.
The burning smell comes from the government’s actions, omissions and deceptions. They are not limited to the occupant of the Planalto Palace, they also involve his deputy, Hamilton Mourão.
Even demoted to caretaker of the Amazon, the general became the president’s accomplice by rehearsing comedy for English to see at COP26. Deceived accomplice, as Bolsonaro left Mourão talking to himself by not renewing his third excursion to the forest, operation GLO (guarantee of law and order) Samaúma.
The revelation is in a report by Vinicius Sassine: for 45 days, the deputy gave as real a military operation that never existed. The famous chao: on August 24, Mourão announced at a meeting of the Amazon Council that the third GLO under his command would be extended, as agreed with the Ministry of Defense.
The renovation never happened. Samaúma ended a week later, but not the deputy’s willingness to apply a new coat of olive varnish on Bolsonaro’s anti-environmental policy.
The general had said at the time that he had talked to Defense Minister Walter Braga Netto “so that GLO can be extended, with the resources that remain, so that when our negotiators arrive in Glasgow for COP26 in November, have positive numbers”.
Mourão was wrong in agreement and boasting. Its GLOs —Verde Brasil, Verde Brasil 2 and Samaúma— burned R$ 550 million to fight deforestation and fires without achieving significant results.
In 2020, the destruction of the Amazon forest reached 10,851 km², a record in 12 years. An increase of 7% over the 2019 figure, which had already returned to the five-digit level.
This year’s result has not yet come out, although statistics from the National Institute for Space Research (Inpe) are usually published before the COPs, at least when the climate summit takes place in December. The disclosure date is not fixed by Inpe, but by the Ministry of Science, Technology and Innovation.
In any case, between August 2020 and July 2021, the period analyzed with satellite images, there were 8,793 km2 of deforestation alerts by Inpe’s Deter system, which is less reliable for mapping deforested areas than Prodes, from which the official annual data comes . Deter always points a lower number than Prodes.
If the official result, which should be ready by now, was good, it is to be expected that the Planalto would announce it before Glasgow. The only recent data did not come from the government and it is bad for Brazil: its carbon emissions in 2020 rose 9.5%, according to the NGO consortium Seeg.
This is what Brazil has to show in Glasgow: lack of control over its biggest source of carbon emissions. With the record of aggressions to the environment in the Bolsonaro government and its misleading propaganda, it is useless to recycle the goal of six years ago, sign a declaration of forests and promise a reduction in methane.
Planalto and the Congress crowded with ranchers are partners in the destruction of the Amazon and the cerrado. Mourão is the ox of these piranhas.
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