Newly discovered Amazon species could go extinct 0:52
(CNN) --
Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro's dismal record on the environment is nothing new as his policies were instrumental in rolling back the country's once stringent environmental protections and weakening its environmental agencies.
Under Bolsonaro's mandate, the destruction of the world's largest rainforest has deepened, reaching a historic deforestation of the Brazilian Amazon rainforest in the first three months of this year, the highest ever recorded: an area almost the size of Dallas, Texas, according to data from the Brazilian National Institute for Space Research.
Meanwhile, more than nearly 700 public officials working in the environmental sector have been fired or removed from their positions since 2018, according to data from the Ministry of Economy.
Last year, deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon reached a 15-year record.
But last week, the far-right leader appeared to do a 180-degree turn, signing an environmental decree that establishes higher fines for deforestation, illegal logging, burning, fishing and hunting.
It also introduces higher fines for repeat offenders, and changes the rules for "conciliation" hearings between offenders and environmental agencies, placing a time limit on the offender's ability to participate in the process before proceeding to a hearing. judicial.
The government welcomed the initiative in a statement, calling it an "important step in environmental legislation," which is "essential to ensure that Brazil continues to meet its commitments, both internally and externally."
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A deforested section of the Amazon rainforest is seen in Lábrea, Amazonas state, Brazil, in September 2021.
The move appears to be the first concrete action to support Bolsonaro's promise at the United Nations COP on November 26 to enforce environmental protections in Brazil and end deforestation by 2028.
But some experts view the move skeptically, noting that these mostly procedural changes may be just another way for Bolsonaro to boast to the international community that he is taking positive action, ahead of his re-election campaign ahead of the election. presidential elections in October 2022.
Raoni Rajao, a professor of social studies at the Federal University of Minas Gerais, told CNN that he believes the government is working to re-present itself as green, despite its track record.
"Although even conservatives recognize that the environmental issue is important, the government manages to convince them (conservative voters) that Brazil is doing a great job in the area," Rajao said.
Those who criticize Bolsonaro's policies, he said, are considered "unpatriotic" in the eyes of the government, which says that "international criticism is (trying) to impede the country's development."
The Brazilian Environment Ministry told CNN that the decree is "a regulatory improvement in the fight against illegal environmental activities."
He stressed that it significantly increases the fines, and defended that the environmental conciliation hearings help to guarantee "more efficiency" in their collection.
More than 10,000 species are in danger of extinction in the Amazon, according to a huge study
Since 2019, Bolsonaro has defended the practice of conciliation hearings to speed up the fine process.
Before the new decree, the environmental agency had to wait to hear from the violator whether he wanted to have a hearing to decide whether to take his case to court or if he agreed to simply pay the fine.
That process could take months, or even longer, and created a huge backlog.
Now, offenders have a period of up to 20 days to decide, otherwise the judicial process will be carried out without the conciliation hearing.
But environmental advocates say the compromise option shouldn't exist at all.
Experts believe that it was created by the Bolsonaro government to give the offender a voice and slow down the judicial process.
Indigenous people demonstrate against the environmental policies of the Bolsonaro government in Brasilia last year.
Raúl Valle, director of WWF-Brazil's Social and Environmental Justice program, said in a statement that the hearings have achieved the opposite of their intended goal and have instead practically brought the process to a standstill.
He pointed to the huge backlog of cases that the conciliation process has created.
"This only increases the feeling of impunity in the Amazon, which, in turn, is an incentive for those who deforest it," he said.
From October 2019 to May 2021, almost all (98%) of the 1,154 environmental violation notifications issued in the Amazon by Brazilian environmental agencies remained unresolved, according to a report by the Climate Policy Initiative and the Global Fund for Environmental Protection. Nature (WWF), citing data from the federal government.
Meanwhile, an internal document from Ibama, the government's environmental agency, obtained by data journalists from the independent public data agency Fiquem Sabendo, shows that there are more than 37,000 unpaid environmental infraction fines due in 2024, and 5,000 of them They expire at the end of this year.
"As time goes by, offenders realize that the risk of sanction is low and, therefore, it is worth continuing to use environmental resources without authorization," the Ibama document states.
And, in fact, fewer fines are being issued altogether, said Anne Aimes, scientific director of the Amazon Environmental Research Institute (IPAM).
From 2018, the year Bolsonaro was elected, to 2021, the number of fines issued by the Brazilian environmental agency Ibama fell by 40%: from 4,253 to 2,534.
"Maybe they're trying to show something abroad, but what we see on the ground is the opposite," Aimes said of the decree.
Bolsonaro is expected to meet US President Joe Biden at this month's Summit of the Americas in Los Angeles for their first formal talks.
Aimes added that the government must take a different path if it wants to take environmental crime seriously, calling the decree "facade."
"It is not enough to set a time limit on the (re)conciliation mechanism or higher fines," he said.
Instead, "increased command and control operations on the ground, the reinforcement of environmental agencies and the support of state actors" are needed.
Officials from the State of Pará, in northern Brazil, inspect a deforested area in September.
Although environmental agencies remain understaffed, there have been some positive developments in the sector since last June, under the leadership of newly appointed environment minister Joaquim Leite, and environmental agencies have slowly regained their independence.
But Bolsonaro seems to be working against such initiatives, at least in his rhetoric among his supporters.
Just a few months ago, at an agricultural industry event in January, Bolsonaro criticized the environmental fines, and even praised their reduction.
"We stopped having big problems with the environmental issue, especially regarding the fine(s). Do they have to exist? Yes. But we talked and reduced the fines in the field by more than 80%," he said. .
Jair BolsonaroEnvironment