VANCOUVER—The Sierra Club B.C. has renewed calls for stronger safeguards of B.C.’s old-growth forests after Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro issued an executive order this week that critics say undermines Indigenous rights and threatens protection of the Amazon rainforest.

In one of his first acts as president, Bolsonaro transferred the responsibility for recognizing and protecting Indigenous land rights from the National Indian Foundation to the agricultural ministry.

Environmental groups, including Sierra Club B.C., are concerned the move could result in increased deforestation and the release of carbon currently stored in the Amazon, with global environmental consequences.

“We are talking about how Brazil, as a society, will allow the use of natural resources … and a way of practicing agriculture that can affect all of the environment,” said Priscylla Joca, a PhD student at Université de Montréal studying Indigenous and environmental rights in Brazil and Canada.

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Joca said the major concern is that the Brazilian Ministry of Agriculture has tended to support business and development interests with little regard for the rights of Indigenous peoples, Quilombola communities, or other traditional groups with similar territorial rights.

These rights are closely linked to environmental protections — the best-preserved environments are located on Indigenous and Quilombola lands, Joca said.

While she said the executive order is temporary and must eventually be reviewed by the National Congress, it raises broader concerns about the future of environmental management and industry operations in Brazil.

How that winds up affecting the Amazon rainforest and its ability to store massive amounts of carbon should be of concern to the entire world, said Jens Wieting, a senior forest and climate campaigner with the Sierra Club B.C.

“(It’s) stark reminder for all the other countries of the world that we have global responsibility to protect forests and when one country, in this case Brazil, fails to take this responsibility seriously, other countries must work even harder to protect their forests,” said Wieting.

“We need the world’s rainforest for clean air, for clean water, for a stable climate,” he said.

In response to the situation in Brazil, the Sierra Club is renewing calls for B.C. to ban logging in the largest intact areas of old-growth forest on Vancouver Island.

A Sierra Club B.C. analysis has found that only about 20 per cent of Vancouver Island’s old-growth forests remain intact today.

Brett Lowther, a spokesperson for the B.C. ministry responsible for forests and lands, said ministry staff are working on a “more robust old-growth forests strategy.”

He added that more than 55 per cent of old-growth forests on Crown land are protected, including more than 40 per cent of old-growth forests on Crown land on Vancouver Island.

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Wieting, however, said the government’s numbers mask the urgency of the problem because they only consider the area of old-growth forest still standing today — not what’s already been lost.

“We need to safeguard remaining intact rainforests and the life support systems we all depend on before it’s too late,” Wieting said in a release.

Correction — January 7, 2018: This article was edited from a previous version that mistakenly said trees store carbon dioxide. In fact, it stores carbon.

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