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Cows graze in a deforested pasture on the Yari plains, in Caqueta, Colombia March 3, 2021. Picture taken March 3, 2021.
Deforestation surges in Colombia – and you’ll never guess why
For years, Colombian rebels and narcos perfected the art of kidnapping people for ransom – now they are holding the rainforest hostage.
New figures show that after declining for many years, deforestation in the Andean country has shot up 40% in each of the last two quarters.
The culprit? A major armed group that controls vast swathes of the jungle rescinded an earlier order to protect the vital forest resource. The “Estado Mayor Central,” as the guerilla command is known, is now using the rainforest as a bargaining chip in peace talks with the government, by allowing, or forcing, local farmers to clear trees for cattle or coca farms.
By way of background: In 2016, the government signed a peace accord that ended decades of war with the FARC, the largest of various Marxist and narcotrafficking groups active in the country. But as those rebels demobilized, other violent groups filled the vacuum.
President Gustavo Petro, the country’s first leftist president (himself a former guerrilla), pledged during his 2022 campaign to reduce chronic violence by negotiating a “Total Peace” with all armed groups. He also committed himself to a pro-environment agenda. Suddenly, those are two branches of a common problem.
Line graph of Amazon rainforest deforestation
The Graphic Truth: The big picture of rainforest deforestation
Eight Amazon rainforest nations are gathering in Brazil this week for a two-day summit of the Amazon Cooperation Treaty Organization. It’s the first time the group has convened in 14 years, and negotiations on more than 130 issues are expected to prove contentious, especially proposals to prohibit new drilling projects and end deforestation.
The heads of state from Bolivia, Brazil, Colombia, Ecuador, Guyana, Peru, Suriname, and Venezuela will be in attendance. Colombian President Gustavo Petro is leading the charge to block all new oil development, and he is pressuring his Brazilian counterpart, Luiz Inácio "Lula" da Silva, to join him. Meanwhile, Brazil is considering a huge offshore oil development near the mouth of the Amazon River.
Lula pushed for a pre-summit pledge to end deforestation by 2030, and six of the eight nations agreed, with only Bolivia – whose forest loss increased by 32% last year – and Venezuela abstaining.
The preservation of the Amazon rainforest is key to humanity’s fight against climate change. Here we look at the levels of deforestation in Brazil’s Amazon rainforest since the beginning of the century.
Hong Kong and Chinese national flags are flown behind a pair of surveillance cameras outside the Central Government Offices in Hong Kong, China July 20, 2020.
What We’re Watching: Hong Kong a year later, Brazilian troops in the Amazon, Mexico’s marijuana moves
RIP Hong Kong as we knew it: Exactly a year ago on Wednesday, China imposed a draconian new national security law on Hong Kong. The measure gives Chinese authorities broad leeway to punish political dissent. It came in response to a massive pro-democracy movement on the semi-autonomous island that was touched off by Beijing's attempt to subject Hong Kongers to the jurisdiction of courts in mainland China, where the judicial system is more politicized. Since the new security law went into effect last summer, almost all vestiges of Hong Kong's once-vibrant civil society and relative political openness have been snuffed out. Opposition leaders have been jailed, pro-democracy lawmakers sidelined, and the free press largely shuttered. Meanwhile the US has revoked preferential trade and investment ties with Hong Kong, a number of European countries have cut extradition agreements, and most (but not all) countries around the world have condemned China's policy. And yet, from the perspective of Chinese President Xi Jinping, this is all arguably a win. He has suppressed one of the biggest popular challenges to China's authority in recent years, and made real the idea that there is only one system of government in China: his.
Brazil sends troops to the Amazon: Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro has sent soldiers to the Amazon in order to stop illegal deforestation. This is the third time that Bolsonaro, whose enthusiasm for economic development of the rainforest has contributed to a surge in deforestation since he came to power in 2018, has sent soldiers to enforce environmental laws there. But conservationists and climate activists say that these missions have been poorly equipped and ineffective, providing the appearance of action without really reining in deforestation. As climate change returns to the international policy agenda, Bolsonaro has come under intense international pressure in recent months to do more to protect the Amazon, which is one of the world's most effective "carbon sinks" — a resource that removes greenhouse gasses from the atmosphere. Bolsonaro has bristled at what he and his supporters see as high-handed international meddling in Brazil's domestic affairs.
Mexico to legalize weed: The Brazilians may be trying to stop the burning, but Mexico is gearing up for some smoking. The country's Supreme Court on Monday struck down laws that criminalize the recreational use and cultivation of cannabis. It's a big step towards full legalization, which could make Mexico the world's largest legal cannabis market. Supporters say that would create jobs and, at the margin, undercut the power of drug cartels. But there are still legal hurdles, the most important of which is a legalization bill that was passed by the House but languishes in the Senate. That's in part because polls show nearly 60 percent of Mexicans oppose legalization. And with the cartels focused on more lucrative harder drugs like cocaine and opioids now, legalizing weed isn't likely to hurt them much. Even some pro-legalization activists say the bill doesn't do enough to create security and economic opportunity for farmers who could profit from growing cannabis. Will the Supreme Court ruling spark some fresh momentum in the Mexican Congress?
Brazil’s uncertain role in the world: Fernando Henrique Cardoso
Brazil is the largest economy in Latin America and has been long considered an emerging global power. How does Fernando Henrique Cardoso, who served as Brazil's 34th president from 1995 to 2003, see Brazil's role in the world? On the topic of climate change, Cardoso observed, "The average people don't look after the Amazon, as an asset or a problem. And the Amazon represents both, an asset and a problem. We have to keep the Amazon going on." Cardoso, who is considered Brazil's elder statesman, also shared his perspective on his nation's relationship with China and attempts at global peace, in an interview with Ian Bremmer on GZERO World.
Watch the episode: Brazil on the brink
Podcast: Brazil on the brink: perspective from former president Fernando Henrique Cardoso
Listen: Latin America's largest economy has endured years of economic hardship, a barrage of political scandals, and one of the worst pandemic death tolls in the world. So where does Brazil go from here and how much longer can its president hold onto power? Former President Fernando Henrique Cardoso, who remains one of the most influential political figures in the country, joins Ian Bremmer to discuss Brazil's increasingly divided society, the potential fate of its current far-right leader, the prospects of his most likely challenger (known to all as "Lula") the climate crisis in the Amazon, and the country's complicated relationship with China.
Subscribe to the GZERO World Podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, or your preferred podcast platform to receive new episodes as soon as they're published.
Bolsonaro's Brazil is divided and in crisis
Ian's Quick Take:
Hi, everybody. Happy Monday. Good to see everyone and got a Quick Take for you as we kick off this week. Thought we would talk today about Brazil. It is the epicenter today for coronavirus. The healthcare system in the country is getting overwhelmed. Over 90% of ICU beds are filled in most of the states in the country. As a consequence, you are triaging healthcare. This is what you remember happened briefly in Northern Italy at the beginning of the pandemic a year ago. It's what we feared could happen in New York City, though never quite did. You've got nearing 4,000 deaths a day in Brazil right now, per capita that's worse than anything we've seen in the United States. And yeah, we blame the government. We blame President Bolsonaro.
And you know, in part, this is someone who like former President Trump said, don't worry about this. It's just a little flu, was telling the population that we don't need lockdowns. We don't need quarantines. He didn't want to wear a mask. He didn't like social distancing. And as a consequence, all of that became deeply politicized across the country in Brazil as well. Those governors that engaged in lockdowns were sharply criticized for it. And a lot of people weren't wearing masks. A lot of people didn't take it seriously. Bolsonaro, of course, got COVID himself. He said hydroxychloroquine was a miracle cure. He even questioned the vaccine at the beginning, said that it was dangerous, potentially you can't trust the health care companies. He sits tilted on that as his popularity has gone down significantly. And as a consequence, he's more worried about finishing out his term and being able to win a second term late next year with elections.
But all of this has gone very badly in the country. And indeed, as a consequence of all of that, Brazil today is feeling a lot like the United States at the end of last year, massively politically divided with the potential for impeachment efforts against Bolsonaro that would be incredibly divisive. And with a president who could easily lose reelection, but will not accept that outcome and will claim that he has indeed won. Now, last week was a watershed in that regard. You saw six members of the Brazilian cabinet suddenly removed, including the Minister of Defense replaced with a Bolsonaro loyalist and the three heads of the military services very unhappy about that. Threatening to resign, they're fired the next day.
Does this mean that Brazil is heading for a coup or revolution? The answer is no. It's actually similar to the United States in the sense that the senior military leadership in the country is independent and would not support loyalty to Bolsonaro, no matter what. And the judiciary in the country is still largely independent. These institutions are stronger than what you see in most developing countries around the world, but they're not as strong as the United States. And the fact is that if Bolsonaro were to go down the path of "burn it all down" and "these elections are no good," and "this impeachment is completely unacceptable," if that were to occur, you would get members of state police. You would get low-level members of the military that could come out in support, the former military member, Bolsonaro, himself with a lot of former military around him as senior advisors. So the potential for major social unrest and for a lot of violence is greater than what we saw in January 6th in the United States.
Although, the likelihood that Brazilian democracy is suddenly going to fall apart in my view is just as remote as it was in the United States. This is a deeply, deeply problematic leadership. There's an incredibly divided country. Next year's elections are going to be easily as ugly, maybe even worse than last November's in the United States, and are likely to be very severely contested. So, I mean, if Brazil was the largest economy in the US like the United States is, this would be our top risk out there. Because it's just the largest economy in South America, it's a big deal. It deserves to be talking about it, but it's not the top risk globally.
The funny thing is I have not been universally critical of Bolsonaro because on some counts I've been more sympathetic. For example, economically as much as he is a knee jerk, hardly expert reactionary on a bunch of things, he allows his economic team to take the lead on issues that he doesn't know anything about, whether it's pension reform or tax reform or micro economic reform. A lot has actually gotten done in Brazil over the course of the last couple of years. On climate, Bolsonaro is widely criticized for being one of the worst climate skeptics, climate deniers in the world.
And I obviously think that's a horrible thing, especially when you see all this clearcutting happening in the Amazon forest, but I'm sympathetic for a middle income economy, where the wealthy countries in the world suddenly say, why aren't you doing anything to save your environment? When for decades, we were paying no attention to it. We were, of course, emitting massive amounts of carbon into the atmosphere. We had no problem with exploiting global economies, including Brazil, for our own benefit. And Bolsonaro's basically saying, look, if you want us to pay attention to climate, pay us. Now that this matters to you, how about taking some of the equity here and giving it to the average Brazilian. Something that's very popular inside Brazil, that almost any Brazilian leader would be aligned towards.
But when it comes to responding to the worst crisis that we have seen in our lifetimes, Bolsonaro has been the worst leader of any major economy in the world. No, he's not the former Tanzanian president, Tanzanian President Magufuli, who's now dead of COVID. No, he's not Belarusian dictator, Lukashenka, who said, take a sauna, drink some vodka, and you'll be fine. But of the G20 economies, he's the worst. He's the worst by far and Brazil's suffering for it. And I feel really badly about that. And I hope, I hope, I hope vaccine rollout will happen quickly in Brazil, but so far not so fast, not the United States. They don't have the drug companies, they don't have the infrastructure. They aren't able to pay the money for the vaccines, the way the advanced countries have. And so, as a consequence, the Brazilian people are really suffering. So that's a little bit for me this week. Everyone be safe, avoid fewer people. I'll talk to you all real soon.
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Smoke billows from a fire in an area of the Amazon rainforest near Porto Velho, Rondonia State, Brazil.
Who controls the “lungs of Earth”?
Those fighting to halt climate change call the Amazon rainforest the "lungs of Earth," and they're frustrated that Brazil's current president has made his country a chain-smoker.
A healthy Amazon is crucial for the global fight against climate change. Human activity is pumping unsustainable amounts of carbon into the atmosphere, trapping enough heat to warm the planet in ways that profoundly disrupt the climate. Trees, and the soils they grow in, store carbon that might otherwise reach the atmosphere, but trees that are cut down or burned release more carbon into the air.
That makes rapid deforestation of the Amazon an urgent problem for the entire planet. Clearcutting of trees in the region has been a problem for decades, but the January 2019 inauguration of Jair Bolsonaro as president of Brazil, home to more than 60 percent of the remaining Amazon tree cover, has made matters much worse.
Bolsonaro has stripped environmental protection agencies of funding and manpower, which flashes a bright green light to those who want to cut and burn trees to open land for farms and cattle ranches. Bolsonaro's bid to use Brazil's military to police the Amazon has failed, perhaps because the president himself and some of Brazil's army brass may not believe in the mission.
The results speak for themselves. In 2019, more than one-third of all destruction of the world's tropical forests took place inside Brazil alone. The Amazon lost more trees in 2019 than at any point in the previous decade, and then, despite the pandemic, beat that record again in 2020. When confronted with evidence that the number of fires in the Amazon has spiked sharply on his watch, Bolsonaro accused "greenies" –environmental activists — of setting the fires deliberately to "bring problems to Brazil."
Bolsonaro and his supporters in Brazil don't like it when outsiders demand new protections for the Amazon. "OUR SOVEREIGNTY IS NON-NEGOTIABLE," he tweeted last year in response to threats of economic sanctions over the Amazon from then-US presidential candidate Joe Biden.
But outsiders concerned about the climate are increasing their pressure. The EU has warned that failure to protect the rainforest is an important obstacle to completion of a blockbuster trade deal between Europe and Mercosur, a Brazil-dominated South American trade bloc. Institutional investors are pushing too. But Brazil has (so far) been able to resist these pressures, in part because it exports far more to China than to either the US or Europe, and Beijing isn't pushing for change.
That said, economic threats have helped mobilize Brazil's business community. Many companies have promised to cut carbon emissions and to remove products produced via deforestation from their supply chains. An alliance of Brazilian CEOs and scientists has called for investment in sustainable development.
But so far, Bolsonaro has shrugged off external and internal pressure for a change of course, in part, perhaps, because a challenging election campaign next year might depend on the continued support of his political base — including farmers and ranchers in the Amazon, who say that their industry is important for feeding Brazil and maintaining the country's position as an agriculture superpower. In particular, Brazil is now the world's top exporter of soy beans.
Joe Biden hopes a mix of carrots and sticks might help. The new US president has asked his climate envoy John Kerry to lead an international effort to raise $20 billion for the Amazon, though there are plenty of debates to come over how that money should be used. The money won't flow unless deforestation is reduced, but the new US president hopes that engaging, rather than threatening, Bolsonaro can produce a better result.
In the end, the size and density of the Amazon is itself part of the problem. The ground it covers is larger than all of Western Europe, so whatever agreements are forged and promises made, it will never be easy to police Amazon deforestation.
But Ibama, Brazil's civilian environmental protection agency, must be given the resources to try, climate experts warn, because those trees are crucial for all of us.