{"id":125526,"date":"2019-01-07T12:00:01","date_gmt":"2019-01-07T12:00:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=125526"},"modified":"2019-01-14T11:24:37","modified_gmt":"2019-01-14T11:24:37","slug":"within-hours-of-taking-office-brazils-trump-of-the-tropics-starts-assault-on-the-amazon","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2019\/01\/within-hours-of-taking-office-brazils-trump-of-the-tropics-starts-assault-on-the-amazon\/","title":{"rendered":"Within Hours of Taking Office, Brazil’s \u201cTrump of the Tropics\u201d Starts Assault on the Amazon"},"content":{"rendered":"

3 Jan 2019 – <\/em>Within hours of taking office on 1 Jan, the Trump of the Tropics, aka the new President of Brazil,\u00a0Jair Bolsonaro<\/strong>, launched an all-out assault against the Amazon rainforest and its indigenous communities yesterday, potentially paving the way for large scale deforestation by agricultural, mining and oil companies.<\/p>\n

Startling many commentators by the speed of his action after his inauguration, Bolsonaro signed an executive order or decree, which immediately shifted responsibility for indigenous land demarcation from FUNAI<\/a>, the Brazilian government\u2019s Indigenous Affairs office, to the pro-agribusiness Ministry of Agriculture.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

Jair Bolsonaro – Reuters<\/p><\/div>\n

More worryingly, it could eventually pave the way for the dismantling of the indigenous reserve system, which would allow mining and oil interests to move in unchallenged.<\/p>\n

Indigenous communities were rightly outraged at the move. S\u00f4nia Gujajajara, president of the Articulation of the Indigenous Peoples of Brazil<\/a> (APIB), one of Brazil\u2019s leading indigenous groups, tweeted: \u201cThe unravelling has begun \u2026 Does anyone still doubt that he [Bolsonaro] will carry out his electoral promises to exclude us [indigenous people from our constitutional rights]?\u201d<\/p>\n

Another indigenous leader, speaking with NGO Survival International, asked<\/a>: \u201cIs this President Jair Bolsonaro a real human being? I think not. The first thing he\u2019s done is to mess with indigenous rights. I ask: who were the first inhabitants of this country?\u201d<\/p>\n

Dinaman Tux\u00e1, the executive coordinator of the Articulation of Indigenous People of Brazil<\/a> (Apib) added: \u201cThere will be an increase in deforestation and violence against indigenous people. Indigenous people are defenders and protectors of the environment. We will go through another colonisation process, this is what they want.\u201d<\/p>\n

We need to call out the threat to Brazil\u2019s indigenous community for what it is: genocide.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

Amazon, Brasil. Gleilson Miranda \/ Governo do Acre<\/p><\/div>\n

As Fiona Watson, from Survival International<\/a> states: \u201cIndigenous peoples are frequently regarded as obstacles to the advance of agribusiness, extractive industries, roads and dams. As more rainforest is invaded and destroyed in the name of economic \u2018progress\u2019 and personal profit, uncontacted tribes become targets \u2013 massacred over resources because greedy outsiders know they can literally get away with murder. These are silent, invisible genocides, with few if any witnesses.\u201d<\/p>\n

We must all bear witness to what is happening in the Amazon. For the sake of its people, for the sake of the forest as well as for the sake of the climate.<\/p>\n

According to the Mongabay<\/em><\/a> website \u201cThe potentially resulting wholesale deforestation could be a disaster to indigenous peoples, biodiversity, and even the regional and global climate.\u201d<\/p>\n

It adds: \u201cBolsonaro\u2019s proposed Amazon policies, if carried out, could ultimately help dash the world\u2019s hopes of achieving the global climate goals agreed to in Paris, a failure that could lead to climate chaos.\u201d<\/p>\n

Leading Brazilian researchers, from the National Institute of Space Research (INPE), have calculated<\/a> that Bolsonaro\u2019s policies could triple deforestation in the Amazon from present levels of 6,900 square kilometers (2,664 square miles) annually, to 25,600 square kilometres (9,884 square miles) per year by 2020.<\/p>\n

And if that happens, the so-called lungs of the world, will collapse. And that will affect us all.<\/p>\n

Go to Original \u2013 priceofoil.org<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

3 Jan 2019 – Within hours of taking office on 1 Jan, the Trump of the Tropics, aka the new President of Brazil, Jair Bolsonaro, launched an all-out assault against the Amazon rainforest and its indigenous communities yesterday, potentially paving the way for large scale deforestation by agricultural, mining and oil companies.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":125527,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[61,224,180,221],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-125526","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-environment","category-human-rights","category-brics","category-indigenous-rights"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/125526","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=125526"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/125526\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/125527"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=125526"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=125526"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=125526"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}