MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency
Bill to weaken environmental protection of the Amazon forest fails in Brazilian congress
The decree was sent to Congress by former President Michel Temer, but embraced by Bolsonaro and many in the country's powerful farm lobby An attempt by Brazil's far-right President Jair Bolsonaro and lawmakers backed by big agriculture to weaken environmental laws protecting the Amazon forest and other biomes has failed, as Congress will not vote into law a decree that weakened existing legislation.
Government whip Senator Fernando Bezerra said that temporary presidential decree 876, which required congressional approval by Monday, would not be put to the vote before then.
The decree was sent to Congress by former President Michel Temer, but embraced by Bolsonaro and many in the country's powerful farm lobby. It would have extended by a year the deadline for landowners to comply with maintaining or replanting minimum forested areas on their properties.
However, earlier this year lawmakers tacked on amendments that critics said had turned the decree in practice into an amnesty for landowners who collectively had deforested about 5 million hectares in recent years, an area slightly smaller than Costa Rica.
Some agribusiness companies, worried about the bad image the loosening of the law would give Brazilian products in foreign markets, joined environmentalists in criticizing the amnesty in the Brazil Climate, Forests and Agriculture Coalition.
Bolsonaro has worked to ease environmental controls to facilitate agriculture and mining in the country since he took office on Jan 1.
Environmentalists say that threatens the Amazon rain forest, considered by scientists as nature's best defence against global warming, because the tress absorb vast amounts of greenhouse gas.
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Read all commentsREF: Environmental Protection:
May 30th, 2019 - 04:05 pm 0It takes more than twenty years - 20 YEARS - to get back to the MINIMUM acceptable level of pollution + with a minimum Acceptable Environmental Conditions.
Whereas, the Ruling Political Parties plan for 4 years [MINIMUM] of being in power [to steal the public funds]!
So nobody is really interested in reducing Pollution [sound, air, water, land] + Improving the Climatic Conditions!
WAKE-UP!!!
Good for Congress. Excellent setback for this sinister character, who is nothing but an instrument of a few big corporations.
May 31st, 2019 - 12:49 am 0A ray of hope is the fact some agribusiness joined the environmentalists in sounding the alarm on the amnesty for polluters.
The most repugnant side of this assault on the Amazon rain forest is that, as soon as the forest is gone, the thin layer of fertile topsoil rapidly washes away and the land loses its productive capacity. Then, the companies move on to deforest more land, hence their permanent lobbying for lose rules.
@Enrique Massot
May 31st, 2019 - 01:26 am 0In short:
: If there is NO Rain-Forest
-There will be NO [or less] Rain
: If there is less rain
- There will be fewer farms.
: If there are fewer/smaller farms
- There won't be sufficient food
: BR can then import food from China [or maybe from Saudi Arabia?] Or maybe the Brazilian Refugees may find a country where there is food [+ employment too!] So what exactly is the problem when there isn't any problem?
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