Brazil's right-wing government puts gag order on environment agency

MARCH 13, 2019 / 4:58 PM / UPDATED 4 HOURS AGO

Jake Spring
3 MIN READ

BRASILIA (Reuters) - Brazil’s right-wing government has ordered environmental enforcement agency Ibama not to respond to requests from the media, stoking fears that President Jair Bolsonaro may be rolling back environmental protections out of the public eye.

Bolsonaro assumed office on Jan. 1 after pledging on the campaign trail to curb environmental fines, a key tool employed by Ibama to enforce its regulations. He has also floated the idea of pulling Brazil out of the Paris Agreement on climate change.

Activists and non-governmental organizations fear the moves could drive up deforestation and other environmental destruction.

. . .

“Reducing the mechanisms by which society is informed about environmental issues in Brazil is an affront to (the country’s freedom of information law) and the right to information, and only reinforces the view that they are promoting the dismantling of environmental management in Brazil,” the statement added.

More:
https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-brazil-environment/brazil-right-wing-government-puts-gag-order-on-environment-agency-idUKKCN1QU30F?rpc=401&

LBN:
https://www.democraticunderground.com/10142285292

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Having this fascist in the Presidency who has told the world he intends to break up and exploit protected land belonging to Brazil's indigenous population, which signals desperate suffering for the people there, whose ancestors in Brazil in the rain forest reach back thousands of years, is a threat to the ENTIRE WORLD. It's no small matter.

Brazil's formerly vast rain forest has been deemed the "lungs of the world" for a very long time.

This pro-dictatorship President intends to invade it with huge transmission lines breaking it into pieces, and he has signaled he will be opening some of that land to mining.

The world cannot afford it. The Amazon has been decimated already by illegal logging. Environmentalists have been assassinated trying to save it, one several years ago was an American nun, Sister Dorothy Strang, who was a contracted murder by hired assassins working for a rancher who wanted to raze the forest, and let his cattle take over.

It cannot be emphasized enough that what is happening in Brazil is totally destructive, and it couldn't happen at a worse time.

The President Bolsonaro is coming to Washington in the next day or two to huddle with Trump.

Thank you.