Bolsonasshole Gov. Cuts All Funding To Fight Fires & Amazon Deforestation, Then Abruptly Restores It

In a move that aroused both consternation and confusion, the Jair Bolsonaro government’s Ministry of the Environment (MMA) last Friday at 4:58 PM canceled all funding to combat illegal deforestation and fires in the Amazon and the Pantanal biomes on the part of IBAMA, the nation’s environmental agency, and ICMBio, its national park service, citing budgetary constraints. The government fully reversed itself three hours later and restored the funding.

According to MMA’s original Friday announcement, it was cutting R $60 million (US $11.1 million) from IBAMA’s and ICMBio’s budgets at the behest of two government ministries — the Secretariat of Government/SEGOV (headed by General Luiz Eduardo Ramos), and the Civil House of the Presidency of the Republic (led by General Walter Braga Netto), with the decision communicated via the Ministry of the Economy (headed by Paulo Guedes). However, that budgetary decision makes no sense from a purely financial point of view, according to an analyst questioned by Mongabay. Suely Araújo is a senior public policy specialist at the Climate Observatory (OC), a coalition of 52 Brazilian civil society organizations, and she is also a former president of IBAMA. Araújo says the administration’s justification for the announced cuts makes for a poor explanation.

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Shortly after Friday’s MMA publication, Hamilton Mourão, vice president of the Republic and head of the recently formed Amazon Council, declared that Salles and MMA were hasty in announcing the suspension of operations in the Amazon and Pantanal biomes. “The government is looking for resources to be able to pay out emergency aid [during the COVID-19 pandemic]. So it is taking resources from all ministries,” explained Mourão. But “Minister Salles rushed [to contribute to the social aid package] and the R $60 million [shared] between IBAMA and ICMBio will not be blocked.”

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Salles, in response to Mourão’s public criticism, countered: “It is not true [that I rushed to announce the blocking of resources. [The funding] was already blocked and they unlocked it now. They unlocked it after the note [from the MMA],” he said. Bolsonaro did not comment on the confused episode, but the next day, his son Eduardo, a federal House deputy and staunch supporter of the president, praised the “good job that Minister Ricardo Salles has been doing at the Ministry of the Environment.”

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https://news.mongabay.com/2020/09/friday-night-follies-brazil-cuts-deforestation-funding-then-restores-it/