- Title: Lula's Amazon pledge looks distant as Brazil battles deforestation
- Date: 2nd February 2023
- Summary: PLACAS, PARA, BRAZIL (JANUARY 20, 2023) (REUTERS) VARIOUS OF AGENTS OF THE ENVIRONMENTAL AGENCY IBAMA DESTROYING ILLEGAL SAWMILL IBAMA CAR PATROL ARRIVING AT ILLEGAL SAWMILL URUARA, PARA, BRAZIL (JANUARY 19, 2023) (REUTERS) IBAMA AGENTS WALKING IN DEFORESTED AREA SLOW MOTION OF IBAMA AGENT LOOKING AT DEFORESTED AREA (MUTE) LEADER OF IBAMA URUARA MISSION, GIVALDINO DOS SANT
- Embargoed: 16th February 2023 10:04
- Keywords: Amazon Brazil IBAMA President Lula agents environment rainforest
- Location: VARIOUS LOCATIONS, BRAZIL
- City: VARIOUS LOCATIONS, BRAZIL
- Country: Brazil
- Topics: Environment,South America / Central America
- Reuters ID: LVA001645831012023RP1
- Aspect Ratio: 16:9
- Story Text:A team of Brazil's environmental enforcement agents set out on their first mission this year to combat illegal deforestation with renewed energy after the election of a president who has promised to save the Amazon rainforest.
But after four years of dwindling funding and staff at the environmental agency Ibama under former president Jair Bolsonaro, only two of the 12 agents on the mission near the town of Uruara had experience with field operations. Helicopters were out of action for maintenance so they had to travel by truck.
"We were working with the minimum, both for human resources and equipment," said Givanildo dos Santos Lima, who led the Ibama mission.
President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, who took office Jan. 1, has vowed to end the destruction of the world's largest rainforest but it may take years to show significant progress as understaffed agencies face a bureacratic battle to staff up and a violent one from criminals emboldened by his predecessor.
Lula has drawn global acclaim for his bold conservation targets. The sharp contrast with Bolsonaro, a rightwing populist who blasted environmental agents, was a relief to scientists and environmentalists concerned that the retreating Amazon rainforest may be near a point of no return.
However, the world is unlikely to see much progress in the battle to defend the Amazon until late 2024 at the earliest, according to interviews with nine current and former government officials.
The rainforest was cleared at a rate of about three football fields per minute in 2022, according to government data, driving climate change by releasing vast amounts of carbon dioxide.
Brazil's most powerful weapon against deforestation in the short run is Ibama, which slaps fines on offenders, bans farming in areas linked to deforestation and destroys expensive equipment used in illegal logging.
Ibama's staffing and resources expanded in Lula's 2003-2010 presidency, when he managed to bring down Amazon deforestation by 72%, but its numbers have dwindled dramatically since then.
As Reuters accompanied Ibama's first anti-deforestation missions under Lula in January in the state of Para, the tough task facing the agency was clear in stark terms.
Many of Ibama's veteran field agents retired or left in frustration over the past four years, given restrictions on their jobs under Bolsonaro, who called for more farming and mining on protected lands.
Helicopters can make a huge difference in policing the vast Amazon, but two choppers assigned to the mission failed to arrive as expected due to unspecified maintenance issues.
So agents spent days driving down potholed and flooded dirt backroads in the Amazon in pickup trucks. In one stretch of 12 hours in pickups, they inspected five recently deforested areas.
With a helicopter, the same work would have taken two hours, said mission leader Givanildo dos Santos Lima.
He also said the difficulty of such missions was greater given the heightened risk of violence from environmental criminals emboldened by several years with Ibama in retreat.
Ultimately, Lima and several other Ibama agents told Reuters the agency needs far more people and equipment to control deforestation, rather than merely displace it.
"You squeeze one frontier of deforestation and so they move to another region," said David Belshoff, another agent on the mission. "You need logistics to have other teams in place to fight them wherever they start."
Lula has already begun marshalling more resources for Ibama. His transition team cut a deal with Congress in December to double the agency's enforcement budget from last year to 362 million reais ($71 million) this year.
Sister agency ICMBio, which oversees national parks, saw its funding to protect the reserves rise 55% after Lula's budget deal, government data shows. But staffing levels in ICMBio are even worse than Ibama, with "desperate" need to hire for hundreds of positions, said Tania Maria de Souza, director of the national environmental workers union.
Ibama is also preparing to tap more resources from the rebooted Amazon Fund, which sends money from Norway and Germany to preservation initiatives. Bolsonaro had frozen the fund, which was used before to buy Ibama vehicles and helicopters.
The new government has set up a special Ibama task force to investigate fraud in the timber trade and rescinded a Bolsonaro-era system making it harder to collect environmental fines.
(Production: Leonardo Benassatto, Liamar Ramos) - Copyright Holder: REUTERS
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