This article is more than 1 year old

This article is more than 1 year old

Brazil’s new environment minister, Ricardo Salles, has suspended all partnerships and agreements with non-governmental organizations for 90 days, in a move that was described as “a war against NGOs”.

Announcing the move, Salles said the three-month suspension was to allow a re-evaluation of such partnerships, but civil society organizations described the move as a blatant and illegal attack on the environment and those working to protect it.

Salles, appointed by the far-right president, Jair Bolsonaro, and hand-picked by the agro-business caucus, has previously described global warming as a “secondary issue” and dismissed fines for environmental crimes as “ideological”.

A group of eight networks of environmental organizations said there was “no justification” for the measure, which they described as unconstitutional, because contracts between the government and NGOs can only be suspended through a formal process after irregularities have been found.

The newspaper O Globosaid the move “sounded like a declaration of war on NGOs dedicated to conservation”.

Carlos Rittl, the executive director of the Observatory on Climate, argued that because NGO and government partnerships were subject to long approval processes and periodical progress reports, the minister already had the information needed to evaluate current contracts.

“The minister has shown much more interest in attacking organizations that protect the environment than fighting environmental crimes,” said Rittl.

According to data released late last year, deforestation in Brazil increased by 13.7% – the largest increase in nearly a decade. Indigenous people and other environmental defenders live under precarious circumstances in rural areas with little rule of law – 46 environmental defenders were killed in 2017 in Brazil.

Jair Bolsonaro launches assault on Amazon rainforest protections Read more

Many environmental projects are supported by money that comes from outside Brazil. But included in Salles’s announcement of the suspensions was the Amazon Fund, which is administered by Brazil’s national development bank, BNDES, and is funded through donations mostly from the Norwegian and German governments.

Throughout his campaign, Bolsonaro jeered at NGOs: “You can be sure, if I get [to the presidency], there will no money for NGOs. Those useless people will have to go work.”

Bolsonaro’s supporters celebrated Salles’s decision. “The spending spree with government money is over!” wrote one Twitter user. “Brilliant! Many NGOs benefit from public money to practice political-ideological activism.”

But Rittl said the damage done from a three-month suspension could be irreversible. He and many in the environmental protection community see a grim outlook for the next four years under the Bolsonaro administration.

“The environment is under attack,” he said. “All indications say that deforestation and violence against indigenous people will go up.”

