The Amazon Rainforest Can’t Survive 4 More Years Of Brazil's Jair Bolsonaro
Fire rages in the Amazon rainforest in Pará, a state in northern Brazil. Rates of deforestation hit a 15-year high in 2021, thanks to the policies of right-wing President Jair Bolsonaro, who is seeking reelection in 2022.
(AP PHOTO/ANDRE PENNER)
Far-right Brazil President Jair Bolsonaro has presided over record deforestation of the Amazon. As his reelection campaign begins, the fate of a critical global ecosystem is on the ballot.
Since taking office in 2019, far-right Brazil President Jair Bolsonaro has presided over record levels of deforestation in the Amazon rainforest. He loosened laws and regulations meant to protect the forest from landgrabbers, miners and loggers who’ve declared open season on the Amazon and the Indigenous peoples who live within it. He pursued a ruthless policy of extraction and demolition. He made Brazil a pariah on the world stage, earned the title as the planet’s most dangerous climate change denier, and generated charges that he is guilty of crimes against humanity.
That predictable record of destruction put the future of the Amazon rainforest on the ballot in Brazil’s looming October presidential election, in which Bolsonaro is seeking a second term.
The stakes for the forest and the planet could not be higher. Bolsonaro is currently trailing leftist former President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva in early election polls, fueling hopes among environmentalists, Indigenous leaders and his opponents that the world’s largest rainforest — the preservation of which is vital to stave off global climate catastrophe — may soon get a chance to breathe and even begin to recover.
The nightmare scenario, though, is a Bolsonaro victory that could unleash four more years of destruction that the Amazon simply cannot withstand.
“If Bolsonaro remains in the power of presidency, it’s hopeless in terms of the environment,” said Marcio Astrini, the executive secretary of the Climate Observatory, a São Paulo-based environmental organization. “There will be more deforestation. The Amazon will fast forward to its collapse point.”
Since taking office in 2019, far-right Brazil President Jair Bolsonaro has presided over record levels of deforestation in the Amazon rainforest, a critical global ecosystem that scientists warn is approaching a tipping point past which it will not recover.
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For as much global attention as they receive, climate and the fate of the Amazon have not traditionally served as salient subjects in Brazilian presidential elections. A host of other issues, including rising rates of inflation and Brazil’s continued economic malaise, will likely dominate this campaign.
But da Silva, in particular, has already begun to seize on Bolsonaro’s record of deforestation and mistreatment of Indigenous peoples early in the race, and “the next election will be the one in which the environment counts the most, compared to previous elections,” said congressman Alessandro Molon, a leftist who leads the opposition coalition in Brazil’s lower legislative chamber.
That’s in part because the record levels of deforestation that occurred under Bolsonaro have only intensified in the closing stages of his first term. Deforestation rates, which had already reached a 15-year high in 2021, rose 64% over the first three months of 2022 from the same time last year, according to data released this month by Brazil’s national space agency.
The Amazon is now approaching the point of no return even faster than scientists previously feared, according to new research released in March. Large swaths of the forest are now recovering far more slowly than they once could, and on the current trajectory, the Amazon could lose its ability to regenerate naturally as soon as this century.
Past that point, significant portions of the Amazon could transition from lush, tropical rainforest into less resilient forestland or even arid savanna. That would have dramatic consequences for the global climate, shifting rainfall and weather patterns and turning the Amazon from a vast sink that absorbs harmful greenhouse gasses into a net emitter of carbon.
“This is an early warning signal, and it isn’t too late to do something about it,” said Chris Boulton, a professor at the University of Exeter in England and the lead author of the new study.
But it’s also clear that the Amazon cannot continue on the path Bolsonaro has plotted much longer.
“Given the uncertainty and how drastic the impacts of a large-scale dieback from rainforest to savanna would be, deforestation should be stopped immediately,” said Niklas Boers, a professor at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research in Germany and another of the study’s authors. “Currently, the Brazilian government is really just playing with fire while sitting in a hay barn.”
An Accelerated Path To Destruction
After sharp declines over the first decade of the 21st century, rates of Amazonian deforestation began to rise even before Bolsonaro won the 2018 election. But the ardent climate change denier’s policies have played a direct role in speeding up destruction, experts say.