Temas de relações internacionais, de política externa e de diplomacia brasileira, com ênfase em políticas econômicas, em viagens, livros e cultura em geral. Um quilombo de resistência intelectual em defesa da racionalidade, da inteligência e das liberdades democráticas.
O que é este blog?
Este blog trata basicamente de ideias, se possível inteligentes, para pessoas inteligentes. Ele também se ocupa de ideias aplicadas à política, em especial à política econômica. Ele constitui uma tentativa de manter um pensamento crítico e independente sobre livros, sobre questões culturais em geral, focando numa discussão bem informada sobre temas de relações internacionais e de política externa do Brasil. Para meus livros e ensaios ver o website: www.pralmeida.org. Para a maior parte de meus textos, ver minha página na plataforma Academia.edu, link: https://itamaraty.academia.edu/PauloRobertodeAlmeida;
Merkel pôs em xeque o pacto comercial devido às queimadas na Amazônia. Ao ignorarem o alerta, governos sul-americanos deixam claro seu desinteresse na implementação do tratado. Também na Europa o silêncio predominou.
Faz exatamente um ano desde que o presidente francês, Emmanuel Macron, atacou o Brasil pela primeira vez por causa dos incêndios na Amazônia, durante a cúpula do G7 na França. A chanceler federal alemã, Angela Merkel, disse agora que tem dúvidassobre se o acordo comercial da União Europeia (UE) com o Mercosul ainda pode ser implementado. O motivo são as queimadas na região amazônica.
As "sérias dúvidas" de Merkel se encaixam na corrente de muitos outros críticos que há um ano vêm exigindo cada vez mais veementemente que o governo brasileiro tome medidas contra o desmatamento. Primeiro foram as organizações ambientais, depois os embaixadores da Noruega e da Alemanha e, finalmente, agora fundos, bancos e empresas que pediram ao governo de Jair Bolsonaro que tome uma atitude.
Mas as reações do governo até hoje são as mesmas: afirma que faz o suficiente para proteger a Amazônia; responde que a Europa e os Estados Unidos já desmataram tudo o que tinham; quer oferecer parques nacionais a empresas privadas estrangeiras, para que elas possam proteger o meio ambiente. Afinal, o que o mundo estaria disposto a pagar pela proteção da floresta tropical?
Os militares, segundo o governo, protegerão a floresta de maneira mais eficaz do que as autoridades responsáveis. É preciso poder garantir aos pobres, como os indígenas da Amazônia, uma vida digna, algo que só seria possível com empresas e através de atividades econômicas. Assim soam os argumentos dos ministros quando comentam o tema.
In Brazil, Growing Inequality Fuels Fires Burning The Amazon
View of fire from the BR163 highway, near Itaituba, Para state, Brazil, in the Amazon rainforest, on September 10, 2019. (Photo by Nelson Almeida/AFP via Getty Images)
NEW YORK — The fires in the Brazilian Amazon continue to burn more than two months after they first darkened the skies of São Paulo and caused an international outcry. As the rainforest speeds closer to its tipping point, when it will no longer be able to recover from deforestation, most of the outrage is focused on Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro’s environmental policies. But experts say the fires will continue, even if Bolsonaro changes these policies.
The country’s extreme social and economic inequality also contributes to deforestation. The number of fires in the rainforest tripled from 2018 to 2019, mirroring the growth of inequality in Brazil. According to a study conducted by FGV Social, a Brazilian higher education institution and think tank, inequality in the country has grown steadily since the end of 2014, with the income of the poorest half of the population declining 17 percent and the income of the richest 1 percent growing by 10 percent. The study cites higher cost of education and a rising unemployment rate as the main reasons for these numbers.
Gabriel Santos is a member of the Brazilian political movement Acredito, which aims to decrease inequality in the country and engage more Brazilians in politics. Santos, who came to New York City for last month’s Climate Week, running in conjunction with the United Nations General Assembly, said the sole focus on the environment in combating the Amazon fires is the wrong approach.
“Deforestation and preservation are also economic, social and political matters,” Santos said. “The singular focus on the environmental question, however, ignores all other factors that also contribute to deforestation.”
Data provided by the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics shows that 40 percent of Brazilians older than 25 did not finish elementary school. Schools play an important role in teaching young Brazilians about conservation and sustainability, but they fail to do so when their students drop out. “How do you expect people who have never had access to education to be aware that they are indeed committing a serious crime, mostly in times of an economic crisis?” Santos said. “Of course, there are people who are consciously deforesting, but that is not always the case, and this is something we need to start talking about.”
Brazil is the world’s largest exporter of beef, and 80 percent of the rainforest’s deforestation is related to cattle ranching, according to the Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies. The land’s low cost and relatively easy transportation make cattle ranching a profitable and attractive business opportunity, together with soy cultivation in the Amazon, the study said. But the perceived economic benefits aren’t the only reason people are burning the rainforest, said Frederico Seifert, a finance manager at an environmental performance analysis company in Brazil called SITAWI.
“There is a predominantly false idea among some people in the region that burning up trees in the Amazon to make space for cattle and soy cultivation is an easy way out to make profit out of the forest, mostly poor Brazilians after the financial collapse,” Seifert said. He added that this idea undermines other reasons people set fires in the Amazon. “Socially, Brazil is still behind, and this is one of the main issues that affect all significant areas in the country. Environmental consciousness is missing. People need to be educated and be aware that we actually need the Amazon.”
The rhetoric of Bolsonaro and his administration hasn’t helped raise this consciousness. Before he assumed office, Bolsonaro chose Ernesto Araújo as Brazil’s next foreign minister, despite —or perhaps because of— Araújo’s claims that climate change is a Marxist plot, echoing some of Bolsonaro’s own beliefs. In August, Bolsonaro fired Ricardo Galvão, the director of Brazil’s National Space and Research Institute, known as INPE, after Galvão said deforestation was 88 percent higher in June 2019 than it was in the same month in 2018. In response, Bolsonaro called INPE’s findings “lies” and said two months later at his first UN General Assembly that the forest remains “untouched despite related NASA data which proves the increase of the fires.”
Some of Bolsonaro’s non-environmental policies are also contributing to the inequality growth, critics say, which may add fuel to the fires. Since his inauguration, Bolsonaro has been trying to transfer control of decisions on Indigenous land rights from Funai, a Brazilian agency that works for the protection of the Indigenous, to the Ministry of Agriculture, a move largely seen as reducing the power of the Indigenous and transferring it to large-scale farmers and other industries that want to develop the Amazon.
Franz Baumann, former United Nations special adviser on environment and peace operations, connected the Bolsonaro administration’s actions directly to the Amazon fires. “There have always been fires in Brazil — man-made, since natural ones are quite rare — but the uptick this year, induced by the new government, is concerning,” Baumann wrote in an email.
While opening up the Amazon for development could allow for short-term economic growth for some Brazilians, it doesn’t address the lack of education that lies at the heart of the country’s inequality. Seifert said addressing this issue is crucial in saving the Amazon. Banning deforestation alone isn’t enough.
“Environmental policies need to achieve more of an economic character,” Seifert said. “Otherwise this problem will never end. Brazil needs to stimulate the national economy so that it will grow, and people won’t feel the need to deforest anymore.”
Por uma resposta à altura da nossa potência ambiental
Comissão vai ajudar o país a retomar políticas públicas adequadas e transparentes
O Governo do Amazonas declarou estado de emergência em função do alastramento dasqueimadas em agosto. Mesmo sem nenhuma queimada legal ter sido autorizada neste ano, ainda assim o número de focos de calor alcançou níveis sem precedentes.
No vizinhoestado do Acre, foi a população que reagiu rápido, depois de sofrer com problemas respiratórios. Um grupo de Rio Branco iniciou uma petição pela instalação da CPI das Queimadas que já alcançou 4 milhões de assinaturas. A urgência do tema mobilizou a sociedade civil no Brasil e no exterior, que foi às ruas cobrar por uma resposta à emergência climática. E o que fez o governo?
Bolsonaro chegou atrasado. O número de queimadas atingiu maior nível o nesta década —acima dos 80 mil focos no Brasil e mais de 43 mil na Amazônia— enquanto o país acumulava milhões de reais em prejuízo. E nós estamos apenas na metade da estação seca na região Norte do país. Historicamente, é na segunda metade dela que a situação piora.
O que nos levou ao nível de emergência não foram ventos fortes associados a extremos climáticos. Também tem pouco a ver com o uso produtivo: em geral, quem realiza atividades no ambiente amazônico costuma dominar técnicas de manejo do fogo ou fazer agricultura sem queimar. Segundo a bióloga Erika Berenger, da Universidade de Oxford, a Amazônia não sofre incêndios espontâneos. De acordo com os nossos melhores climatologistas, este não é um ano de seca em função de eventos climáticos.
Queimadas iniciadas de forma intencional e criminosa são a causa e têm como objetivo arrebatar ilegalmente terras públicas. A sensação de impunidade motivou e cresceu a olhos vistos, uma vez que os principais interlocutores do governo com a sociedade afirmaram para quem quisesse ver, ler ou ouvir, o intento de acabar com a fiscalização e o cumprimento das leis ambientais. Um governo que se elegeu com o discurso de combate à corrupção, fecha os olhos para as ilegalidades ambientais e se torna aliado e protetor de quem destrói a biodiversidade do país.
Até hoje, o Ministério do Meio Ambiente não apresentou nenhuma estratégia, plano ou política pública para cuidar da nossa biodiversidade. O orçamento destinado à prevenção e ao controle de queimadas foi cortado pela metade neste ano. Distribuídos nos estados, a maioria dos cargos de superintendentes do IBAMA continuam vagos por decisão do ministro.
Os planos de controle do desmatamento sumiram. A área responsável por adaptação climática foi excluída da estrutura e hoje não há um único servidor cuidando do assunto. E há um forte negacionismo do conhecimento já acumulado por instituições na gestão das florestas e na agricultura de vanguarda. Todos esses fatores já ameaçam o acordo entre o Mercosul e a União Europeia, para o qual o compromisso ambiental é essencial.
Diante da inação governamental e da falta de diálogo, os movimentos cívicos Acredito, Agora! e Livres propuseram uma resposta imediata, com base nas milhões de assinaturas, pedindo providências concretas. Propõe-sea instalação de uma comissão externa, que terá papel fiscalizatório, envolvendo as duas casas legislativas federais sobre o Ministério do Meio Ambiente. Precisamos que o Brasil priorize uma política ambiental efetiva e eficiente.
Não é sobre colocar agentes públicos para apagar fogo, tampoucoproibir por decreto as queimadas—que mais parece uma ação para inglês ver. O verdadeiro desafio é assegurar que, em matéria ambiental, o poder público aja com responsabilidade e transparência. O Brasil, país megadiverso e rico em natureza, só se tornará a potência ambiental que é se tiver política pública adequada para isso.
O Brasil vive uma aberração administrativa sem precedentes. Bolsonaro, o presidente-capitão que tem prazer em tripudiar, fazer pouco caso e ofender adversários imaginários, enxergando comunistas até debaixo da cama, acabou subindo de status e é agora classificado como um desastre global – arrastando junto consigo o prestígio do Brasil, que no plano ambiental levou décadas para ser erigido com ações de preservação e que em poucos dias virou cinzas pela negligência gritante do mandatário para com o assunto.
O reputado “The New York Times” classificou o Messias dos trópicos como “o mais maçante e insignificante dos líderes”. No mundo inteiro, da Alemanha aos EUA, do Canadá à Noruega, sem contar na mais nova inimiga preferencial do capitão, a França, diversos protestos repudiaram seus atos tidos como fascistas e selvagens, perto da barbárie. Bolsonaro resolveu responder à reação com bravatas. Confunde soberania com soberba. Mistura conceitos, faz malversação de dados técnicos e explora as fake news para produzir suas estultices. Ele mesmo se converteu em uma versão satirizada de Dom Quixote a enfrentar moinhos, trazendo a reboque seu exército de Brancaleone. E são muitos ao lado dele a compartilhar do universo paralelo que criaram.
Em um rompante de sabujice explícita, o ministro da Educação, Abraham Weintraub, chamou o francês Emmanuel Macron de “idiota oportunista”. O filho Zero Três, Eduardo Bolsonaro, aspirante à vaga de embaixador em Washington, deu lições de diplomacia tosca endossando o xingamento. O ministro Onyx Lorenzoni mandou os europeus enfiarem o dinheiro — R$ 300 milhões que iriam ser lançados aqui sob a forma de contribuição ao Fundo da Amazônia — lá pelas bandas de suas florestas “que necessitam mais”. E o titular da pasta do Meio Ambiente, Ricardo Salles, tentou ditar regras para receber a ajuda.
Ao falarem grosso encenaram um show de patetices, comandado pelo capitão em pessoa, que ainda recorreu às redes sociais para veicular vídeos de caça à baleia na Dinamarca como se fossem na Noruega. Só faltaram as bananas para ornar o festival de cretinices da republiqueta. Mas ainda estávamos prestes a testemunhar uma cafajestada capaz de causar vergonha alheia a qualquer brasileiro minimamente digno, que preza pelo respeito ao ser humano. O governante golden shower, afundando na degradação moral, resolveu fazer um comentário jocoso digno de borracharia sobre a primeira-dama da França. Em tom de galhofa, com imagens das respectivas cônjuges dos dois líderes, um seguidor bolsonarista havia publicado que a razão da “inveja” de Macron seria a beleza de Michele Bolsonaro em comparação a de Brigitte Macron. No que o mandatário brasileiro não perdeu tempo e sapecou a sua pândega sexista: “não humilha, kkkkkkk”.
O abominável Bolsonaro das queimadas, como vem sendo visto lá fora, passou de todos os limites. Isso vindo de um mero “hater” das redes já seria desprezível. Em se tratando de um chefe de Estado, que representa a Nação e seus compatriotas, passa do suportável. A falta de compostura de Bolsonaro na Presidência da República já era conhecida de boa parte dos brasileiros. Ganhou alcance planetário e o converteu em um pária global. Transamazônico, literalmente. Por aqui um movimento intitulado “#DesculpaBrigitte” tentou remediar o estrago. Recebeu milhares de adeptos não apenas entre o público feminino.
O escritor Paulo Coelho levantou a mesma bandeira e resolveu enviar escusas formais em nome do Brasil. Espremendo o que ainda restava de credibilidade nacional, o “Mito” abriu novo flanco de guerra alegando que as terras indígenas “inviabilizam” o País. O direito dos índios a parte do território nacional é garantido pela Constituição, mas isso pouco importa quando o objetivo é encontrar culpados pelos problemas ambientais. Parece que toda a alegação vale a pena em seu triste espetáculo de desinformação. Antes o mandatário havia atribuído a responsabilidade das queimadas a ONGs e, no momento seguinte, aos produtores rurais. Sem apresentar qualquer prova em um caso ou outro.
Com o seu repertório infindável de bobagens, o presidente age como um doidivanas inimputável, que pode esnobar recursos, dar falsos testemunhos, difamar reputações e praticar crimes contra a honra alheia. E não pode.
Na verdade é constrangedor assistir a tantos atentados retóricos e de comportamento. Na essência, eles escancaram a mediocridade de comando que tomou o Planalto. Difícil mensurar o tamanho da ruína política que essa escalada de escárnio e falta de escrúpulos do mandatário no que tange a questões de interesse mundial vai causar ao País. Mas desde já é possível prever que ele caminha para um isolamento e irrelevância internacionais em virtude do ridículo.
O Brasil entrou com ele na fogueira. Complicado será não sair chamuscado de lá.
The outside world is right to worry, but must show finesse in its dealings with Brazil
PICTURES OFFIRESraging in the rainforest.
A social-media storm in which #Amazon Is Burning dominated what passes for the global conversation. A war of words in which Emmanuel Macron, France’s president, branded as a liar his Brazilian counterpart, Jair Bolsonaro, who in turn accused Mr Macron of colonialism and mocked his wife’s looks. An offer of $22m from theG7 countries to help fight the fires, which Mr Bolsonaro rejected unless Mr Macron ate his words. It has been an extraordinary ten days for Brazil. Through the smoke, two things are clear: Mr Bolsonaro’s policies are profoundly destructive of the Amazon rainforest, and deterring him will take much more subtlety abroad and more determination from opponents and even allies at home.
A former army captain of far-right views, Mr Bolsonaro won Brazil’s presidency last year partly on a platform of reviving a moribund economy by sweeping away left-wingery and green regulation. He promised to end fines for violations of environmental law, shrink the protected areas that account for half of the Brazilian Amazon and fightNGOs, for which he has a visceral hatred. In office, his government has gutted the environment ministry and Ibama, the quasi-autonomous environmental agency. Six of the ten senior posts in the ministry’s department of forests and sustainable development are vacant, according to its website. The government talks of “monetising” the Amazon but sabotaged a $1.3bn European fund that aims to give value to the standing forest.
Ranchers, illegal loggers and settlers in the Amazon have taken all this as encouragement to power up their chainsaws. Deforestation in the first seven months of this year rose by 67% compared with the same period last year, according toINPE, the government’s space research agency. Mr Bolsonaro calledINPE’s data lies and fired its director. His initial reaction was, preposterously, to blame the fires onNGOs.
Mr Bolsonaro’s approach is driven by prejudice and nationalism. “He deeply, ideologically, believes that environmentalism is part of a left-wing view of the world,” says Matias Spektor, at Fundação Getulio Vargas, a university in São Paulo. Brazil’s armed forces have long thought that outsiders have designs on the Amazon, and that they must develop it or risk losing it. The generals in Mr Bolsonaro’s cabinet, usually a force for restraint, are not on this issue. Behind his tirades against Mr Macron is the expectation that Brazilians will rally round the flag. That is why the world needs to tread carefully.
Mr Bolsonaro is right about some things. Mr Macron was high-handed in discussing the Amazon at theG7 without inviting Brazil. While the world has a legitimate interest in the rainforest’s fate, it doesn’t own it (though French Guiana has a chunk). Mr Bolsonaro is right, too, that fires were worse in some past years. Many maps exaggerate their extent.
Brazil has some of the world’s most stringent controls on deforestation. From 2005 these slowed the forest’s destruction dramatically, before they were undermined by budget cuts and now by Mr Bolsonaro.
Like Janus, his government faces two ways on this issue. Brazilian diplomats abroad present their country as committed to halting deforestation. At home, the president winks at those who practise it. That is why it is important to hold his government to its word.
“The main issue is how to get to a rational discussion about what’s happening,” says Marcos Jank of the Centre for Global Agribusiness at Insper, a university in São Paulo. That is something Brazil’s modern farmers want. They persuaded Mr Bolsonaro not to pull out of the Paris agreement on climate change, or abolish the environment ministry. They fear consumer boycotts and theEUpulling out of a recently concluded trade agreement, as Mr Macron threatened. In fact, both would have limited effect. Mr Jank notes that 95% of Brazil’s $102bn-worth of agricultural exports are commodities that don’t go directly to consumers; 60% go to Asia. But Brand Brazil has certainly been damaged.
Politically, too, Mr Bolsonaro is on treacherous ground. Although Brazilian nationalism should not be under-estimated, most Brazilians worry about climate change. As the president spoke on television on August 23rd about the fires, there were pot-banging protests in prosperous parts of cities, which helped to elect him. But halting his scorched-earth practices will require organised political action as well as protest.■
The Amazon fires put spotlight on two rival leaders
(Eraldo Peres/AP; David Mercado/Reuters)
Even as fires rage in both their countries, there’s little neighborly love between the leaders of Brazil and Bolivia.International scrutiny has fallen on both countries following a summer where vast tracts of the world’s most important forest went up in flames. In Brazil, there’s beena more than 80 percent spike in the number of fires from 2018, a development that garnered international headlines when the city of Sao Paulo got cloaked in sooty smoke last week.
Similar pollution reached Bolivia’s largest city, Santa Cruz. An area roughly the size of Connecticut in Bolivia’s densely forested Chiquitania region, on the border with Brazil and Paraguay, has burned to the ground this summer, endangering hundreds of animal species.By one account, it may take Bolivia’s forests two centuries to recover.
But don’t expect either Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro or his Bolivian counterpart, President Evo Morales, to come to the other’s aid. When the former, a far-right firebrand, took office at the start of the year, the latter, a South American leftist stalwart,tweeted his disgustat “the reemergence of white supremacist (KKK) ideology” in the continent’s politics.
The feelings were mutual. At Bolsonaro’s inauguration, Morales, the only regional left-wing leader to attend, wasjeered by the new president’s supportersas a “communist” and a “f---ing Indian.” Inan interview with the Brazilian newspaper O Globo, a lawmaker in Bolsonaro’s political party scoffed at critics who worried about the risks facing Brazil’s indigenous communities under the new president’s watch. “If you like Indians, you should go to Bolivia,” said Rodrigo Amorim, the recently elected congressman, referring to Morales’s indigenous ethnicity. “As well as being communist, it’s governed by an Indian.”
Since coming to power in 2005, Morales has beenunabashed about his originsand his desire to uplift his country’s most marginalized. He leverageda boom in natural gas and mineral exportsto redistribute the wealth and bring hundreds of thousands of Bolivians into the middle class through populist social plans that guaranteed him reelection in 2009 and 2014. Although Bolivia remains one the continent’s poorest countries,its gross domestic product per capita has tripledwhile Morales has been president.
But Morales’s popularityhas been waning. He is seeking reelection in October for an unprecedented fourth term — a bid only possible after he controversially circumventedthe results of a 2016 referendumthat blocked him from scrapping constitutional term limits.
Meanwhile, Bolsonaro’s antipathy toward both indigenous minorities and leftists has been a defining streak of his politics. During his successful 2018 election campaign, hetarred his domestic opponentsas would-be leftist autocrats in the vein of Venezuela’s Nicolás Maduro — and, indeed, Morales. And, now in command, Bolsonaro has followed through on his campaign trail vows: a restructuring or wholesale dismantling of Brazil’s existing environmental protections for indigenous areas in the Amazon, to the benefit of the country’s powerful agribusiness industry. Not for nothing didhe earn the sobriquet“Captain Chainsaw.”
Those moves provide the backdrop to the unfolding calamity in the Amazon rainforest, referred to widely as the “lungs” of the planet. Critics,including prominent politicians in Europe and elsewhere, argue that Bolsonaro has emboldened cattle ranchers and loggersto start setting fires to clear land. At the Group of Seven summit in France on Monday, French President Emmanuel Macron announced an immediate fund of $20 million to help fight the fires in the Amazon. He and other European leaders have also threatened to stall a free-trade deal between the European Union and a bloc of South American nations over Bolsonaro’s harmful policies.
This censure has not played well in Brazil. “From the start, Bolsonaro, like U.S. President Donald Trump, stacked his cabinet with science deniers who call climate change a Marxist hoax and made his open disdain for minority communities who depend on the Amazon a hallmark of his political messaging,”noted reporters for HuffPost Brazil. “Now, both leaders distract from fierce criticism and low polling at home by recasting criticism from media or other countries as unfair mudslinging from ideological opponents.”
Bolsonaro has angrily lashed out at his critics and recentlywarned his supportersthat “Brazil is the virgin that every foreign pervert wants to get their hands on.” On Monday, his governmentrejected the G-7 aidon offer, saying in a statement that the funds should be used instead to reforest Europe and save the continent’s famous cathedrals like Notre Dame in Paris.
“The Bolsonaro administration is trying to produce a rally-around-the-flag effect,” said Matias Spektor, an associate professor of international relations at the Getúlio Vargas Foundation in Sao Paulo,to my colleagues. “They are trying to denounce Macron … and the international press and the NGOs as a coalition that is set on suspending Brazilian sovereignty over the Amazon and it’s our duty to fight back.”
Though they are far from kindred spirits, Morales and Bolsonaro share a similar culpability in what has unfolded this summer.The Bolivian president’s administration initially played down the scale of the fire before realizing its horrific reach after an outcry. Morales suspended his reelection campaign to help coordinate his government’s response. After his earlier reticence, he did an about-face andsaid he welcomes whatever aidthe rest of the world can muster for Bolivia’s firefighting efforts.
But critics argue that the fires in Bolivia are also a product of policies that encouraged deforestation, includinga recent decree aimed at boosting beef production for exportthat infuriated Bolivian civil society. Morales has a “top-down mentality about imposing development projects on the Amazon,” said Andrew Miller of conservation organization Amazon Watchon the left-wing radio show Democracy Now. “So, at the same time that Evo Morales has had some progressive policies, he’s also had tensions with indigenous peoples.”
And suddenly, Morales has something in common with his ideological foe across the border. “The two countries most affected [by the fires] have governments at opposite ends of the political spectrum, but their position on deforesting the Amazon is the same,” said Eugenio Coter, a prominent Bolivian bishop,to Catholic News Service. “There is no political or economic plan for the Amazon that does not depend on the extraction of natural resources.”
