Brazilian President-elect Jair Bolsonaro Getty Images / MAURO PIMENTEL / Contributor

Will Jair Bolsonaro dedicate himself to the meticulous destruction of the Amazon now he has won Brazil's presidential election? The question had been on everybody’s lips in the build-up to the vote. Bolsonaro's position on environmental issues has raised strong concerns about the future of the largest rainforest on Earth.

Confusingly, Bolsonaro’s official presidential programme makes no mention of the Amazon. On environmental matters, he says that he will support the transition to renewable energies, especially in the Northeast of the country, reduce the monopoly of petroleum giant Petrobras by privatising parts of the company, licence more hydropower plants, and merge the Ministry of the Environment within the Ministry of Agriculture.


There's not much in the programme on deforestation or abandonment of CO2 targets. Yet, headlines – mostly based on the candidate’s Twitter support of Trump’s move to pull out of the treaty – extensively claim that Bolsonaro has pledged to leave the 2015 Paris Agreement, which committed Brazil to reduce carbon emissions by 43 per cent by 2030 – an undertaking directly related to reducing deforestation in the Amazon.

Alice Amorim, coordinator of climate policy at Clima e Sociedade, an institute promoting low carbon development in Brazil, says that the politician has not quite promised to withdraw from the agreement. “Bolsonaro’s claims on the environment are purposefully unsubstantial,” she says. “He adapts them to the specific context in which questions are asked, but it is difficult to know what he is actually planning. We are working with the assumption that things are still very much open.”

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Last September, at a meeting with insurance businessmen in Rio de Janeiro, Bolsonaro referred to Brazil's involvement in the Paris Agreement in the following terms: “What is at stake [in the Paris agreement] is national sovereignty, because it is 136 million hectares that we can lose control of. If we’re going to hand over 136 million hectares, I’m out.” Last week, however, he confirmed that it is not his intention to pull out of the agreement, although he wants guarantees of Brazilian control over land in the Amazon.

When it comes to international treaties, Bolsonaro seems keen on retaking control of the land – much more so than exploiting the rainforest. In fact, pulling out of the Paris Agreement alone would not let him change environmental legislation on the Amazon: to do so, he would also need to amend Brazil’s Forest Code, a national law that requires landowners in the rainforest to maintain 80 per cent of the territory they own as a reserve for native vegetation. In other words, only 20 per cent of privately-owned land in the Amazon can be legally deforested.


That would require passing reform through Senate and Congress, where Bolsonaro’s SLP does not hold a majority. More worrying is the fact that the Parliamentary Agricultural Front (FPA), which holds a third of the lower house and a quarter of Senate seats, endorsed the candidate at the start of the month. Agribusinesses are emerging as Bolsonaro’s strongest constituency, and he has every interest in giving them what they want.

Again, things are not so clear-cut. Some groups of farmers, like the Democratic Ruralist Union (UDR), defend a conservative vision of agriculture and favour relaxing policies on deforestation to encourage intensive farming in the rainforest. But they face a growing branch of agribusinesses that sees low-carbon agriculture as the future of trade for Brazil. Not the least because of international agreements such as the Amsterdam declaration, which was signed in 2017 between Denmark, France, Germany, the Netherlands, Norway and the United Kingdom, with the goal of completely cutting imports of agricultural goods that are produced as a result of deforestation by 2020. Those include soy, Brazil’s top export this year – it is easy to see why farmers would be interested in producing it without deforesting the Amazon.

The forces that will influence Bolsonaro’s decisions about the environment, therefore, have mixed interests – and arguably, that is exactly why the candidate has remained vague on the topic.

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For Amorim, however, that does not mean that Brazilians shouldn’t worry. “The critical issue is still that Bolsonaro thinks that the Forest Code is harming agricultural economics,” she says. “He believes in productivity first, and the environment second.”


One of Bolsonaro’s key influencers, in fact, is Paulo Guedes, his special advisor on economic issues and potential Minister of Finance. Famous for his highly liberal economic agenda and push for a free market, Guedes is likely to encourage environmental policy that favors intensive farming in the Amazon.

For Raoni Rajão, co-author of a study on the impact of political bargaining on climate mitigation, Bolsonaro’s campaign strongly points towards efforts to reduce the effects of environmental policies. "Bolsonaro has talked many times about the need to stop the so-called 'industry' of environmental fines in Brazil," he says. "If this leads to the dismantle of IBAMA, the country's environmental protection agency, the consequences would be disastrous for the Amazon."

IBAMA is an independent branch of the Brazilian Ministry of the Environment responsible for implementing the Forest Code, delivering licences for protected land, or preventing illegal deforestation. In 2012, it caught Bolsonaro illegally fishing inside a federal reserve off the coast of Rio de Janeiro, and fined him $2,700.

As anecdotal as his feud with IBAMA may sound, reducing the agency’s powers seems to be very much part of Bolsonaro’s presidential plan. According to Rajão, incorporating the Ministry of the Environment within the Ministry of Agriculture suggests that the politician wants to relax laws on the environment to the advantage of farmers, for example by neutralising the power of IBAMA.

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“There are many ways Bolsonaro could increase deforestation without having to change the law, and therefore without needing to pass Congress and Senate approval,” he says. “The most obvious one is money. Without it, IBAMA cannot go out there and do any field work. The easiest way to cut down on controls is to not provide money for it.”

Another one would be to forbid IBAMA agents to carry weapons, which they need to defend themselves in some of the more dangerous, remote areas of the rainforest – Bolsonaro actually put forward a bill to that effect following his fishing troubles, when he was sitting in Brazil’s chamber of deputies.

Even more worrying, from both social and environmental perspectives, is Bolsonaro’s potential treatment of indigenous tribes in the Amazon. For Amorim, he has been a lot more vocal on his vision for the future of indigenous people, in stark contrast to the ambiguity he has sustained regarding environmental policies.

“Contrary to the Paris Agreement, there is a lot of thinking going on about indigenous territory and local communities in the Amazon,” she says. “They are seen as land grabbers. It won’t be about reducing their land, but certainly about weakening the policies that are protecting it.”

The Brazilian Constitution requires the government to recognise indigenous territories – based on anthropological research and environmental assessments – and guarantee that these protected areas are adequate for the social and cultural protection of the next generation.

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Indigenous surveillance is one of the most effective ways of protecting the forest: only two per cent of deforestation has occurred inside indigenous territory – something that conservative farmers resent.

Adriana Ramos, director at the indigenist Socioambiental Institute, says: “Even before Bolsonaro was running, there was very strong pressure from the rural sector inside Congress to change the Constitution. Farmers have presented several proposals already to weaken territorial rights and open indigenous territory to mining and exploitation.”

Bolsonaro’s alignment with this stance was disclosed on a number of occasions. In a speech he gave at the Hebraica Club in Rio in April 2017, he said there would be no land space for reservations or NGOs; and at a recent rally, he said that “minorities have to bend down to the majority.”

But even if Bolsonaro decides to satisfy the demands of conservative farmers to limit the expansion of protected territory, he would meet similar difficulties to trying to change the Forest Code. If not stronger ones: Congress and Senate are likely to be even more cautious about changing the Constitution to weaken the rights of indigenous people.

“If Bolsonaro builds up a majority, starts a social debate and passes a law democratically, that is fine,” says Ramos. “What worries me more is that he could try to establish new rules to pass laws without needing the approval of independent political bodies.”

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Bolsonaro has picked retired military general Antonio Hamilton Mourão as his Vice-President running mate – a controversial figure who openly talked at a public lecture last year of plans by the army to overtake the government. He has also shown support for the man who commanded Sao Paulo’s secret police during the military dictatorship, and who is allegedly responsible for torturing political dissidents.

Updated 28/10/2018, 18:45: The image on this article has been changed.

Updated 29/10/2018, 10:15: This article has been updated to include Jair Bolsonaro's latest comments on the Paris Agreement.

Updated 03/12/2018, 10:15: This article has been updated to better reflect Raoni Rajão's views on Jair Bolsonaro's environmental policy.

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