Tereza Cristina Dias said the model, who is a UN environment goodwill ambassador, should ‘not go around criticizing Brazil’

This article is more than 1 year old

This article is more than 1 year old

Brazil’s new agriculture minister has described Gisele Bündchen as a “bad Brazilian” whose environmental activism has tainted the country’s image abroad, inviting the supermodel to instead become an “ambassador” for the agricultural sector.

In an interview with a conservative radio station on Monday, Tereza Cristina Dias was asked about the “PR problems” that have arisen from Bündchen’s criticism of government attempts to roll back environmental protections.

“It’s absurd what they do today with the image of Brazil,” said Dias, who was the leader of the farmers’ caucus in congress before being appointed to the environment ministry by far-right president Jair Bolsonaro. “For some reason they go out and paint a picture of Brazil and its industries that is not true.

“Sorry, Gisele Bündchen,” she added. “You should be an ambassador and say that your country conserves, that your country is on the global vanguard of conservation, and not go around criticizing Brazil without knowing the facts.”

Bündchen – a UN environment goodwill ambassador – did not immediately respond, but seemed unlikely to take up the offer.

Brazil's president announces plan to protect forest – after plea from Gisele Read more

Several days after Bolsonaro’s election, Bündchen spoke out against a proposal to merge the agriculture and environment ministries, describing the move as “potentially disastrous and a path with no return”. (The ministries have remained separate.)

In 2017, she spoke out against proposed legislation to open 600,000 hectares (1.5m acres) of Amazon rainforest for development on Twitter, prompting ex-president Michel Temer to veto the bill. She later accused the government of “auctioning off the Amazon” to the private sector.

Bündchen, 38, has also worked on clean water and anti-deforestation initiatives and was awarded a Global Environmental Citizen award from the Harvard School of Medicine. She did not immediately respond to Dias’s comments.

After her radio interview, Dias wrote on Twitter: “I said that Gisele Bündchen could be an ambassador for Brazil to show that we produce agriculture for the world while preserving the environment. The model will soon receive our invitation.”

The model could potentially play a key role in the looming battle in the Brazilian Amazon between environmental activists and agro-business supporters, who hold considerable power in government after Brazil’s decisive swing to the right in October’s elections.

The Bolsonaro administration has received harsh criticism from environmental defenders for its stance that the Amazon is excessively protected and should be open for development.

Bolsonaro has said the he would pull Brazil out of the Paris climate accords and on his first day in office, he issued an executive order that put the regulation and creation of indigenous reserves in the hands of the agriculture ministry.