President Jair Bolsonaro signed a decree on Monday to dispatch Brazilian soldiers to the Amazon in a bid to curb surging deforestation, just two months after withdrawing troops from the region and days after his Environment Minister resigned.
The decree published in the country's official gazette said soldiers would go to the states of Para, Amazonas, Mato Grosso and Rondonia through the end of August. It didn't provide details about the number of troops to be deployed nor the cost of the operation.
바카라 웹사이트Vice-President Hamilton Mourão told reporters earlier this month that the deployment could be extended beyond two months with the arrival of the dry season, when people burn forest to clear land.
바카라 웹사이트Amazon deforestation has been ticking upwards for several years, but surged since the 2018 election of Bolsonaro, who repeatedly called for development of the rainforest.
바카라 웹사이트The destruction has elicited an international outcry and, more recently, an effort by US President Joe Biden's administration to urge Bolsonaro to get tough on illegal logging.
바카라 웹사이트This will mark the third time that Bolsonaro has dispatched troops to the Amazon, following two “Operation Green Brazil” deployments, the most recent of which ended in April. Each mission involved thousands of soldiers. Still, environmental experts have said the military was ill-prepared and had limited efficacy.
바카라 웹사이트In 2020, deforestation in Brazil's Amazon reached a level unseen since 2008, according to official data.
바카라 웹사이트And 98.9 per cent of deforestation had indications of illegality, either done near springs, in protected areas or carried out without requisite authorization, according to data released this month by the MapBiomas Project, a network of nonprofits, universities and technology companies that studies Brazilian land use. Brazil's environmental regulator levied fines in just 5 per cent of these cases, the group found.
바카라 웹사이트Márcio Astrini, executive secretary of the Climate Observatory, a network of environmental non-profit groups, called the latest military a “smokescreen that will allow the government to claim to be fighting deforestation. He noted a previously successful initiative, largely funded by the Norwegian and German governments, has been suspended since 2019.
바카라 웹사이트“The government has adopted a series of measures that simply destroys the state's monitoring capacity, like stopping environmental fines," Astrini said. He added that the regulator has also ceased destroying machinery used for illegal logging.
바카라 웹사이트Bolsonaro's plan to send soldiers comes as the US administration has called for curbing Amazon deforestation in order to help arrest climate change. Bolsonaro has said Brazil lacks enough funds to do so on its own, despite the fact the nation did so at the start of this century.
바카라 웹사이트The US has made clear it would only be willing to contribute once Brazil registers concrete progress, of which there has so far been no sign.
바카라 웹사이트Talks between the US and Brazil's environment ministry have stalled, three Brazilian government officials told The Associated Press, speaking on condition of anonymity because they weren't authorised to speak publicly.
바카라 웹사이트The decision to deploy troops is partially meant to demonstrate the government's good intentions to the US, one of the officials added.
바카라 웹사이트On June 23, Environment Minister Ricardo Salles announced his resignation, giving up his post amid sharp criticism of his tenure and two investigations into his actions involving allegedly illegal timber operations. He has denied all wrongdoing.
