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The Amazon rainforest loses vast areas to deforestation every year
Brazil's far-right President-elect Jair Bolsonaro will help the environment and help the Amazon rainforest.
Mr Bolsonaro's future chief of staff, Onyx Lorenzoni, announced the new "super ministry" as the new administration began to emerge.
The controversial new Brazilian leader is supported by the agribusiness lobby.
A train environment minister tweeted that the move was "tragic".
"This disastrous decision will bring survivors to the destruction of forests," Marina Silva said.
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Earlier, Vice President-elect Hamilton Mourao dismissed environmentalists' concerns about development in the Amazon, saying the government would act responsibly by managing the spread of agriculture in the region.
Why is the Amazon important?
The Amazon region holds the largest tropical rainforest in the world and is home to the world.
- Is the Amazon facing new dangers?
Most of its millions of square kilometers are inside Brazil, where landowners must keep a percentage of their forested land.
That percentage ranges from 20% in some parts of the country to 80% in the Amazon.
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Reuters
Thousands of Jair Bolsonaro's opponents took to the streets of Sao Paulo on Tuesday
But a debate has raged in Brazil over the often conflicting needs of environmental protection and economic development.
Earlier this year the supreme court upheld major changes to laws which environmentalists say will make illegal deforestation acceptable.
What are Mr Bolsonaro's views on the environment?
Mr Bolsonaro, 63, has already suggested that Brazil could pull out the 2015 Paris Agreement on climate change. He says his requirements compromised Brazil's sovereignty over the Amazon region.
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In the run-up to the election he had suggested merging agriculture and environment ministries, saying, "Let's be clear: the future ministry will come from the productive sector."
Warned by activists that such a move would undermine the environment ministry's controls on the commercial sector, he struck a more conciliatory tone saying he was "open to negotiation on that issue".
What else has been been decided?
Following behind-closed-door talks on Tuesday, Mr. Bolsonaro's top economic advisor Paulo Guedes confirmed that an economic super-ministries would be combining finance, planning, industry and trade.
It will be headed by Mr Guedes.
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AFP
Senior aide Onyx Lorenzoni (C) and economist Paulo Guedes (L) held talks with Mr Bolsonaro in Rio de Janeiro
Mr Lorenzoni also announced that Mr Bolsonaro's first foreign visits would be to Chile, Israel and the US. He described them as countries that "share our worldview."
Mr Bolsonaro swept to victory in Sunday's election, easily beating his left-wing rival Fernando Haddad.
The trainer paratrooper is a deeply polarizing figure who is in the past defended the actions of the country's military training and said he is "in favor of dictatorship".
His populist approach to dubbing him "Trump of the Tropics".
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