SÃO PAULO 27 MAY 2025: In November the city of Belem, gateway to the Brazilian Amazon, will be host to up to 50,000 people coming from all over the world for the UN’s climate conference, COP 30. The media here is full of stories about the lack of hotels, the inadequate infrastructure, the eviction of shantytowns to make way for new roads and canals. Somehow these problems will be solved or shoved under the carpet. But will the conference end up fiddling while the Amazon burns?
The Senate has just voted to pass Bill PL2159. For environmentalists, scientists and indigenous organizations, it is the Amazon devastation bill. They fear its effect will be to weaken all the existing environmental protection laws so much that the Amazon will become a wild west of destruction, deforestation and fires. A green hell instead of a green climate solution, bringing more air pollution, more river contamination, more desertification of the soil. The ‘flying rivers’ that take rain from the forest to the farms of central and western Brazil will diminish and die out. The smoke from the fires will leave hundreds of thousands with respiratory problems, and the accumulated knowledge and practices of indigenous people will be lost as their territories are invaded. The senators have voted to destroy the future of their own children and grandchildren.
Before it becomes law, the bill also has to be approved in the Chamber of Deputies where the majority, made up of conservative and rightwing members, plus the ‘developmentalist’ leftwingers, are expected to approve it. The small number of legislators who make up the Parliamentary Environmental Front will do their best to oppose the bill, but there are moves to get it rushed through the parliamentary process without debate in committees, where expert witnesses and scientists could have been called to give evidence.
In the Lula government, the Environment Minister, Marina Silva, is a lone voice protesting against the weakening of environmental protection. When she appeared before a Senate committee this week, at their invitation, she was disrespected by senators from Amazon states who are leading the rush to destroy their own environment.
The senators were aggressive, and misogynist in their treatment of the Minister. The video showing her being interrupted, insulted (‘Ponha se em seu lugar’, the committee president said to her at one point, i.e. keep to your place) and even having her mike turned off when she tried to defend herself, has aroused outrage and triggered a huge wave of solidarity. After all Marina has won international respect for her dogged defence of the Amazon in a sea of hostile interests, not only in Congress but in the PT governments she has served.
PL2159 will abolish the present careful process of technical analysis and in loco studies of proposed projects, which is often criticized for being too slow, and replace it with a simple online form to be filled in by the applicant seeking approval. In the words of one critic, ‘this will open the way for tragedies like the bursting of dams, the contamination of rivers and the destruction of forests’.
The bill also gives the government the right to classify enterprises as ‘of strategic national interest’, allowing them to obtain licences extremely quickly, eliminating any technical analysis and public consultation, even if the projects will have a huge environmental impact. Any project declared an ‘emergency project’ will be able to dispense with environmental licensing altogether.
Additionally, the power to grant environmental licences to projects will be devolved to local government authorities, state governors and mayors, instead of IBAMA, the federal environment agency. In practice this will encourage competition between different localities to attract more investment by lowering environmental standards.
Finally, PL2159 abolishes the obligatory consultation before the start of any new project of indigenous peoples and quilombo communities which are still in the process of demarcation – as is the case of over 200 such territories. The demarcation process is slow and complicated, demanding complex studies by experts, and is often deliberately hampered by the interests of those who want to get their hands on the resources the areas contain. But many of these areas have been inhabited by indigenous people for centuries and constitute green oases in the midst of advancing deforestation. The quilombo communities set up by runaway enslaved people in the 17th,18th and 19th centuries, were usually located in remote, isolated regions, which kept them intact from invasion and destruction, and are only recently being recognized.
The result of these measures will be to destroy Brazil’s present environmental protection system, allowing virtually a free hand to individuals and companies who want to mine, farm, log, or exploit the resources of the Amazon region.
If this destructive, retrogade law is approved before COP 30, it will make a mockery of Brazil’s ambition to be a leader in environmental questions. By accelerating the destruction of the world’s largest and most biodiverse tropical forest, it will contribute to the climate crisis, not only in Brazil but on the planet. Will COP 30 fiddle with texts and declarations while all around them, the Amazon burns?
Main image: composite from O Conver@ente
