Vatican Amazon Synod On Climate, Indigenous Rights 2B Met With Bolsonaro Greenwashing Conclave

A special three-week synod focused on the Amazon region due to be held at the Vatican in Rome, Italy this October has antagonized the Bolsonaro government, who regard it as an interference in Brazil’s national sovereignty. The Synod has a seemingly innocuous sounding name: “Amazonia: new paths for the church and for an integral ecology.” However, for the Brazilian president’s National Security Adviser General Augusto Heleno, head of the Internal Security Cabinet, the GSI, “it’s worrying and we want to neutralize it.”

General Heleno worries that the progressive clergy will use the Synod to criticize the government’s Amazon policies, which though still taking shape, are likely to include a ban on all further demarcation of indigenous reserves, the opening of indigenous lands to mining concessions, and the building of numerous infrastructure mega-projects, including roads, railways and dams – policies that could heavily impact conservation areas and indigenous reserves, and cause a big uptick in deforestation, putting Brazil’s 2015 Paris Climate Agreement carbon reduction targets at risk.

The synod arose out of Pope Francis’ 2015 encyclical Laudato Si, “Caring for our common house” which called for action on global warming and pinpointed the pan-American Amazon region as an area of concern ­– the document caused considerable controversy in Latin America. Taking part in the Synod will be bishops and priests (and one nun) from the nine countries encompassing the Amazon rainforest, along with representatives of NGOs that work in the region. However, the right-wing government of Jair Bolsonaro appears to consider the themes to be discussed, including climate change and indigenous peoples, to be part of a leftist agenda.

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The government’s strategy for neutralizing the Amazon Synod reportedly includes the deploying of intelligence agents to monitor preparatory meetings and putting diplomatic pressure on the Italian government to intercede with the Vatican to avoid, or at least tone down, criticism of Brazil’s Amazon policies. The government is also demanding the right to participate in the synod, an extremely unusual request. In a sign of how big of a threat the government views the Synod, it has decided to sponsor a rival symposium in Rome, just a month before the Pope’s meeting, to present examples of “Brazil’s concern and care for the Amazon. Government-supported actions to protect environmental areas, quilombos (settlements founded by runaway slave), and indigenous groups will be showcased.

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https://news.mongabay.com/2019/02/bolsonaro-government-takes-aim-at-vatican-over-amazon-meeting/