Ricardo Salles: Brazilian Minister of the Environment resigns as deforestation accelerates | International

Ricado Salles, the man who has led Brazil’s environmental policy since Jair Bolsonaro became president, resigned on Wednesday, according to reports. O’globo. Ricardo Sallles resigned a few weeks after the opening of two police investigations against him, one for links to a case of illegal timber trafficking and the other for alleged obstruction of investigations in a case of deforestation. His resignation coincides with the renewed US environmental interest brought by President Joe Biden and with a surge in alerts for illegal logging in the Amazon, the world’s largest rainforest.

The minister cited personal reasons for leaving the post. He is replaced by Joaquim Pereira Leite, who until now was responsible for the department of the Amazon and environmental services at the ministry. The pressures for Bolsonaro to drop him are many and old. And despite this and the constant departures and arrivals of government ministers, including health, Bolsonaro had so far resisted his departure from office. That same Tuesday, he publicly congratulated him at an event in Brasilia: “Congratulations, Ricardo Salles. It is not easy to lead your ministry ”.

In the two cases for which Salles is under investigation, there is a suspicion that the wood was illegally mined in the Amazon. Authorities are investigating whether the resigning minister and other officials in his ministry acted to benefit loggers in exchange for financial benefits. The police pointed to Salles after having detected “suspicious movements” in the law firm of which the minister is associated. The amount which raised these suspicions is 14 million reais. But the income of the minister while he held public office in the government of São Paulo between 2016 and 2017, when his income rose from one million reais to almost nine million, are also in the spotlight.

The Amazon lost 11,088 square kilometers of trees last year, 9.5% more than the previous year. The results, published last November, are the worst in the past twelve years. And monthly satellite alerts show this year’s numbers could be even worse. Deploying thousands of military personnel to the Amazon to stop the fires after the Amazon fire scandal in August 2019 has proven ineffective despite the fortune it cost.

One of the most salient moments of Salles’ tenure is a phrase he uttered during an explosive Council of Ministers in April 2020, the video of which was released by order of the Supreme Court. “Now that we are in a moment of tranquility because the media is focused on the covid, we must take this opportunity to approve the herd and simplify the rules, ”he said. cattle, who comes from boi (beef), in this context comes to mean flexibility through legal changes in environmental standards to facilitate the expansion of pastures for livestock.

Shortly after his resignation, a bill was passed in parliamentary committee that makes it difficult to demarcate new indigenous lands, which the Bolsonaro government has in fact kept paralyzed since coming to power. Indigenous groups have been leading protests outside Congress in Brasilia for days to prevent this setback.

Bolsonaro is under pressure on several fronts. On the one hand, the pandemic. The revelations that emanate daily from the Senate commission of inquiry which analyzes its management of the health crisis tire him. Rejection of him is increasing although he retains 25% support, according to polls. And on the environmental front, scrutiny has intensified since the United States returned to the Paris Agreement.

Biden called a climate summit in April with leaders from around the world to celebrate the United States’ return to the forefront of the fight against climate change. Bolsonaro attended the meeting promising to reduce deforestation to levels and within the timeframe already promised by his predecessors and in search of international funds to step up the fight against fires and illegal logging in the Amazon. And the day after the summit, he halved the budget of the Ministry of the Environment.

The dismantling of environmental policy undertaken by Bolsonaro with Salles at the head of the ministry was first denounced by the previous holders of the portfolio, those on the left and those on the right. The President and the Minister of the Environment have both been fined for environmental offenses.

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