There has been, for many years, a continual global lobby for the Brazilian government to assume a far more militant posture in the matter of the destruction by artisanal miners of the country’s portion of the 5 million plus acres of Amazon rainforest. A consensus now appears to have been arrived at that the lobby has failed and that other measures need to be applied.
Last month Amazon watchers were reporting further vast areas of charred tree trunks, evidence that illegal loggers in Brazil continue to operate with what are believed to be the customary lacklustre restraints.
If the country has, over time, come under widespread international pressure to push back more vigorously against illegal logging and forest fires in the Amazon, these have reportedly increased significantly under the presidency of Jair Bolsonaro whose seeming indifference to the environmental considerations linked to the continual destruction of the Amazon continue to be a matter of sustained comment amongst other governments and environmentalists, globally.
In March, the Brazilian president reportedly gave an undertaking to increase the country’s funding for environmental enforcement and to bring an end to the deforestation of the Amazon rainforest by 2030. Environmentalists have said however that Brazil’s commitments on environmental issues cannot always be relied upon for realisation.
Washington is reportedly requiring concrete action by Brazil to curb deforestation in 2021.
Since he assumed office in 2019, illegal logging and forest fires have reportedly been on the increase and data generated by the Brazilian authorities suggest that last year deforestation reached at least a twelve-year high. In the first four months of this year deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon totaled 1,157 square kilometers.
