Jair Bolsonaro has said he will reveal the countries that imp …

Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro has threatened to publish a list of countries that import illegal timber from the Brazilian Amazon in the coming days., including those who are very critical of its environmental policy. Bolsonaro explained that the federal police have developed a method that will help uncover the origin of the confiscated and exported timber. During his virtual speech at the twelfth summit of the BRICS Forum (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa), the far-right president regretted the recent “unwarranted attacks” against Brazil, although statistics show deforestation in the Amazon increased alarmingly under his leadership.

In another part of his speech at the summit, Bolsonaro criticized the “knowledge monopoly” which he believes occupies the World Health Organization (WHO) during the year of the covid-19 pandemic, and called for “urgent reforms” to the UN health agency. The President of Brazil recalled that since the start of the coronavirus crisis criticized the “politicization” of the virus, which he said last week was “oversized”. His country, meanwhile, remains the third in number of infections (5,876,464) and the second in terms of deaths (166,014) in the world.

“We will reveal in the coming days the names of the countries that have illegally imported wood from the Amazon.. And some of these countries are my government’s most severe criticisms of this region, ”the far-right president said at the virtual BRICS summit.

“I think that after this revelation which interests everyone, why not say it, in the world, this practice will decrease a lot in our region”, he added in front of the leaders of the entity composed of Brazil, from Russia, India, China and South Africa.

Environmental experts and NGOs say Bolsonaro government has weakened environmental monitoring agencies, and that his discourse in favor of extractive activities in protected areas promotes deforestation and forest fires, which have reached record levels in the Amazon and other biomes such as the Pantanal.

In 2019In his first year in office, Bolsonaro received a wave of criticism from international leaders, led by French President Emmanuel Macron, for the alarming increase in fires in the planet’s largest rainforest. During this year loss of vegetation cover in the world’s largest rainforest has increased by 85 percent, reaching 9,165 square kilometers, its highest level since 2016, according to official data.

In the first eight months of 2020, deforestation alerts fell 4.94% from the same period in 2019, reaching 6,099 square kilometers, a figure still high despite the percentage reduction. Two weeks ago, Vice President Hamilton Mourao toured the Amazon with ambassadors from eight countries, aiming to improve the worn image of the Bolsonaro government.

The Amazon promises to be a thorny issue in Bolsonaro’s future relationship with U.S. President-elect Joe Biden, which the Brazilian president has not yet congratulated on his triumph over the outgoing Donald Trump, ally and often mirror of Bolsonaro. During the campaign, Biden threatened the Brazilian government with “significant economic consequences” if it continued to deforest the Amazon., causing a enraged reaction from Bolsonaro.

“We recently saw a great candidate for the head of state say that if I don’t put out the fire in the Amazon, he will remove trade barriers against Brazil. How are we going to handle this?” official act in Brasilia. “Diplomacy is not enough. When the saliva stops, there must be gunpowder,” threatened the Brazilian president a few days ago.

Against the WHO

During the virtual summit of emerging countries, Bolsonaro did not spare criticism either WHO, an institution which, according to him, “in urgent need of renovations”. The far-right president added that the current crisis due to the coronavirus pandemic shows that “countries are at the heart of the solution” and that “it was not the international organizations that were able to overcome the challenges, but the coordination between our countries “. He said that, as during the financial crisis of 2008-2009, emerging countries can once again play a key role in the recovery of the global economy.

Bolsonaro recalled that he has always tried to approach health and the economy in parallel and with the “same sense of responsibility”, in the challenge of reaching a “post-covid world anchored in freedom, transparency and Security”. The same president said last week that “We will all die one day and there is no point in running away from that “and that Brazil “must stop being a country of queers.”