Fires in the Amazon had a new increase in 2020 in comparison with the previous year. The National Institute for Spatial Research (Inpe) detected during the year 103,161 active fires. In 2019 there had been 89,176. At the same time, the area under alert of deforestation in the region called Legal Amazon (composed by the states of Acre, Amapá, Amazonas, Maranhão, Mato Grosso, Pará, Rondônia, Roraima and Tocantins) has been establishing records this year. According to Deter-B (System for Detection of Deforestation in Real Time), last month was the worst in the historic series registered by the system. When comparing the months of May in 2020 and in 2021, the increase in areas with alert of deforestation was of 41%. There were 1,180 km² under alert of deforestation. For the first time, the area under alert is over 1,000 km².
With the recent involvement of the very minister of the Environment, Ricardo Salles, in an accusation of dulling the Federal Police’s (PF) investigations in the biggest apprehension of wood in Brazil, made during Operation Handroanthus of the Federal Police, the role played by the Bolsonaro administration becomes even more explicit in relation to the environment: to make the way easier for the companies that wish to devastate it. As we have been denouncing, Salles has been proposing “to debate” mining in indigenous territories. Positions and actions like the ones of the minister of the Environment serve the function of stimulating and endorsing the violence of gold diggers against the indigenous population, as it happened recently to the Munduruku people in Jacareacanga, state of Pará.
Not only the Amazon is under intense attack, but also all Brazilian biomes. And along with them, the lives of the communities which defend them; as for the vegetation itself, which is replaced by enterprises that threat land, air and ground, as for the threat through violence carried out by hired guns in the service of mining projects and agribusiness.
By verifying the character which the socioenvironmental crimes on the rise in Brazil have, financed and promoted to a great extent by transnational capitals, it becomes evident that the fights must unite the territories under attack and the international scope of the fights. The Bolsonaro administration is just a tool used by the big companies.
For those reasons, we believe that it is each time more necessary to articulate the campaign of accountability of the transnational companies and to strengthen the popular movements and community organisations, which are the ones who really defend the areas.
The articulation with popular sectors is fundamental, since all the dismantling of the Brazilian State which is being done will favour the action of transnational companies, and will represent an even greater risk in scenarios in which the free trade agreements advance.
We talk more about this issue in the text Amazon: internationalist solidarity against transnationals closing in, in the publication From the countryside to the city: stories of struggle for the right of people to land and life. See the work here.
Read the update chapter by chapter:
Popular solidarity against the ethical makeup of companies
