Brazil’s president Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva has continued to make good his promise to end the destruction of the Amazon that surged under his predecessor Jair Bolsonaro when he organized the first raids against illegal deforestation in the Amazon rainforest on Thursday.
The raids in the rainforest state of Para to stop loggers and ranchers illegally clearing the forest were led by the environmental agency Ibama. This is coming after the agency had launched similar raids in the states of Roraima and Acre this week, Ibama environmental enforcement coordinator Tatiane Leite said.
Bolsonaro as the president criticized the agency for issuing fines to farmers and miners and also oversaw a government that gutted staff and funding for environmental enforcement by Ibama in his four years in office.
Despite Ibama’s extensive experience and success in fighting the destruction of the Amazon, the agency was sidelined by the Bolsonaro-led government which gave the military and later the Justice Ministry authority over operations to fight deforestation,
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An area larger than Denmark was deforested under Bolsonaro, a 60% increase from the prior four years.
When Lula was campaigning last year, he pledged to put Ibama back in charge of combating deforestation with beefed-up funding and personnel. Although additional money and staff have yet to reach the front-line enforcers since he returned to the office on January 1, Ibama agents said that they already felt more empowered by Lula announcing environmental protection as a top priority.
“Publicizing raids to dissuade environmental criminals is already a big change. That didn’t happen in the previous government, whose goal was to show that we weren’t doing anything,” said Givanildo dos Santos Lima, the agent leading Ibama’s Uruara mission.
Lula took office for the first time in 2003 when Amazon deforestation was near all-time highs, and through strict enforcement of environmental laws reduced it by 72% to a near-record low when he left office in 2010.
Story was adapted from Reuters.
