With Amazon on Fire, Brazil’s Environmental Enforcers Say Bolsonaro Hobbles their Work

RIO DE JANEIRO — Hundreds of government workers on the front lines of enforcing Brazil’s environmental laws had signed an open letter as of Wednesday warning that their work has been hampered by the administration of President Jair Bolsonaro, contributing to a rise in deforestation and the fires sweeping through the Amazon.

The letter was issued amid a global debate over the fate of the Amazon as thousands of fires are raging across the world’s largest rainforest. The workers said in their letter, signed over the last two days, that Brazil’s environmental protection system could “collapse” if nothing changes.

Employees of the country’s main environmental agency, IBAMA, said their mission had been hobbled in recent years as a result of budget cuts, staff reductions in remote areas, political interference and a weakening of environmental regulations.

“There is no way to separate those factors and the significant rise in deforestation and fires,” they wrote in the letter.

So far this month, there have been more than 27,400 fires detected in the Amazon. Such fires occur yearly as farmers clear land to grow crops or graze cattle. But this year’s fire season, the most intense in a decade, drew global concern last week as world leaders and celebrities issued stark warnings last week about the fate of the Amazon.

The letter comes as President Jair Bolsonaro has rebuffed offers of international aid and called pressure from foreign leaders on environmental matters an unacceptable affront to Brazil’s sovereignty.

Since Bolsonaro took office in January, deforestation has increased at a significant rate. IBAMA, meanwhile, has carried out fewer enforcement actions, which include issuing fines, warnings and conducting worksite raids.

While Brazil has strict environmental laws, it has limited, and diminishing, ability to enforce them. IBAMA’s workforce of field agents has shrunk 44% over the past decade, down to 730 this year. In recent years, a vast majority of fines issued by the agency for violations of environmental laws have gone unpaid.

According to Rene Luiz de Oliveira, IBAMA’s general coordinator, field agents face growing hostility and threats in much of the country. In 2017 and 2018, Ibama installations in remote towns in the Amazon were set on fire.

And in June and July, IBAMA was unable to carry out operations in the state of Pará, where deforestation has been soaring, because local police officers would not provide backup.

Leaders of two employee associations described in interviews this week a demoralized and beleaguered workforce that had been contending for years with budget cuts and a rise in wildcat mining and illegal mining.

Those challenges mounted after Bolsonaro took office in January, said Alexandre Bahia Gontijo, the president of the Association of Environmental Specialists, which includes workers at the ministry of the environment, IBAMA and another conservation agencies.

“From the beginning of the Bolsonaro government the change was drastic,” he said. He added that the political rhetoric has created an incentive for people to break the law without fearing any consequences.

Gontijo said IBAMA agents have become fearful of using the most effective tool at their disposal: destroying the equipment and vehicles of people caught working in protected areas. IBAMA agents are legally allowed to destroy equipment found in protected areas such as indigenous territories.

In April, Bolsonaro decried that practice in a video recorded by a senator from the state of Rondônia, an Amazon state that has seen a surge of deforestation and land invasions this year. “Nobody should be burning anything, machines, tractors,” Bolsonaro said.

Local police forces, which often escort IBAMA agents on dangerous missions, have become more reluctant to cooperate, he added.

“There were missions that IBAMA agents didn’t go on because there wasn’t enough security,” he said.

Earlier this month, Paulo de Tarso, a federal prosecutor who works in the southeastern section of the state of Pará, which was very hard hit by the fires, warned IBAMA that a group of farmers, loggers and business owners were planning to set fires along a roadway to show their resentment of environmental law enforcement.

But IBAMA replied that because of attacks suffered by their teams in the field, and the lack of support by the police, they could not stop the plan.

Denis Rivas, the president of the National Association of Environmental Experts, another group of government workers, said many longtime workers have seen their life’s work crumble in recent years since the era when Brazil succeeded at reining in deforestation came to an end around 2012.

Deforestation began inching up after that and has accelerated significantly in the Bolsonaro era as environmental agencies were weakened.

Bolsonaro’s disparaging remarks about environmental enforcement work have stung, Rivas said.

“It creates a sense of persecution,” he said. “I don’t know of any organization that can develop in a climate of fear and terror.”

On Friday, under international pressure to act, Bolsonaro ordered a military operation to help put out the fires and vowed that his government would take a “zero tolerance” approach to enforcing environmental laws.

IBAMA workers said in their letter that they welcomed that move but worry that it would amount to an empty promise if it is not backed by a “permanent, continuous, strategic and effective enforcement mechanism.” Absent that, they added, “the rates of destruction of the Amazon rainforest will not diminish.” Bolsonaro’s administration has bristled at international criticism over the fires, arguing that Brazil has done more than many other countries to preserve its forests.

The IBAMA employees warned that failing to double down on conservation efforts would pose a bigger threat to economic growth.

“Respecting environmental protection laws matters especially to the Brazilian economy, which relies heavily on the export of commodities,” they wrote. “The global clamor for the protection of the Brazilian Amazon, and the risk that the country could face economic sanctions targeting its exports, make that all the more relevant.”

A company that is a major buyer of Brazilian leather warned that it might cancel purchases of Brazilian leather because of concerns over the relationship between agribusiness and the fires devastating the Amazon.

This buyer, VF Corp., includes well-known international brands like Timberland, The North Face, Eagle Creek, Dickies, Vans, Kipling and others. Brazil’s leather goods trade organization, CICB, wrote to Brazil’s minister of the environment, Ricardo Salles, on Tuesday, informing him of the warning.

José Fernando Bello, the president of CICB, wrote, “The need to contain damages to the country’s image in the international market, in connection to Amazon issues, is undeniable.”