Bolsonaro and the Amazon: make up for lost time

The disaster left by Bolsonaro in Brazil, which ranges from health to the most accelerated destruction of the Amazon, is not a trivial matter.

In the long blacklist of his management are not only the nearly 700,000 deaths for trying -criminally- to let the pandemic pass, but also for its decisive and unforgivable contribution to the destruction of the Amazon forest, a matter that I have dealt with in this same newspaper. (06/10/2022; 09/29/2022).

The sustained deforestation of the Amazon, as is known, is a tragedy with global repercussions.

There are, by the way, shared responsibilities among the countries of the Amazon basin, which is home to around 30 million people, and includes the territory of Brazil, Colombia, Ecuador, French Guiana, Peru and Venezuela.

70% of the 7 million square kilometers of the Amazon is located, in that order, in Brazil (3.6 million square kilometers), Peru (782,000) and Colombia (484,000).

In Brazil, however, it is, therefore, more than half.

Consequently, the bulk of the load, which is where the greatest deforestation in the country since 2008 occurred in the Bolsonaro-years: increased 79%, due to unprecedented accelerated destruction.

The assumption of the Government of Brazil by Lula opens up a promising perspective for the Amazon region.

As I have been saying in this newspaper, an electoral victory for Lula in Brazil could set the tone for a decisive turn against the current practices of accelerated destruction of the Amazon.

After many years a different perspective appears, marked by two central components.

On the one hand, a decisive adjustment against the permissive and tolerant policy towards the destruction of the Amazon.

Lula, upon assuming the Government, proposes, rather, to protect the Amazon forest.

Secondly, favorable political conditions that give hope that a series of governments with political signs that are not the traditional liberalism at all costs coexist in the Amazon region for which the environment is only an obstacle to run over.

Establishing common guidelines and policies for repercussions in the Amazon was obviously out of place while a predator ruled Brazil, which occupies more than 50% of the Amazon space.

Things have changed since January 1 and Lula will have to see how he manages to materialize his declared commitment to protect the Amazon region into political actions.

Little or none of this could be carried out, however, with impact responses if the other two key countries in the Amazon space -Peru and Colombia- did not jointly push the car of a concerted Amazon protection policy.

The coincidences of politics mean that, at present, governments coexist in the three countries inclined to the protection of the Amazon region and the peoples that inhabit it.

In the midst of the comings and goings of internal polarizations or acute political crises, the current circumstance would seem to offer adequate conditions for effective concerted policies.

On the occasion of the transmission of command last Sunday, January 1 in Brasilia, President Petro tweeted a substantive message of a very important call, calling for "A great pact to save the Amazon jungle in favor of humanity."

Crucial message.

But at the same time synthetic because, as is obvious, the so-called "great pact" contains a crucial background assumption: not only Brazil and the Colombia of Petro, but also Peru, is the other key country to make such a call a concrete objective. .

The "great pact", to be such, has to be at least between these three countries, as is evident.

Politics, however, would seem to oppose, at first sight, such a crucial purpose of agreement on matters of global importance.

Petro's particular position vis-à-vis the Peruvian political process would seem to be -I repeat, "at first sight"- a major obstacle to such agreement.

I believe, however, that if things are well managed, and putting the great historical interests of the peoples of Brazil, Peru and Colombia first, sooner rather than later the troubled waters should calm down.

Respectable, by the way, the sympathy that President Petro could have had with the then President Castillo.

The sensitivity, moreover, with the dismissal of Castillo is understandable since in Petro's personal history weighs his own dismissal as mayor of Bogotá in 2013 by decision of an administrative authority.

However, a more objective and rigorous analysis of Peru's complex internal political circumstances should replace President Petro's particular view of omitting that there was a self-coup and that what took place last month was not a "coup d'état" that overthrew President Castillo.

If in the Petro of 2013 and Castillo of 2022 the concept of "removal" was present, the situation is completely different.

The

is one in which it was a decision of an administrative authority that dismissed him irregularly.

So irregular that the Inter-American Court thus established it in a forceful sentence.

In Castillo's case, we are facing a dismissal adopted by Congress by an overwhelming majority in the face of an assumption provided for in the Constitution.

In various constitutional norms in the region, such as the Peruvian one, Congress has the power to remove the president in certain serious cases.

In Peru, he did it because he wanted to dissolve Congress and concentrate all power by intervening the justice system and the prosecution.

Nothing was, then, "venial sin."

After the storm of political events at the moment, it is necessary to put forward and give priority to strategic and State issues that concern, as in the example of the Amazon issue, not only the three most concerned countries but all of humanity.

Let the “great pact to save the Amazon jungle in favor of humanity” of which Petro spoke in Brasilia be built.

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