During the first mandate of Jair Bolsonaro, nearly 40,000 km² of forest were shaved in four years, the equivalent of a country like Switzerland. His rival, Lula, promises to involve his government in the defense of the “lung of the planet”.
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Among all, it is ultimately Bruno Latour that best summed up the issue of the Brazilian election. On September 12, 2020, the daily Folha of Sao Paulo published a long interview with the French thinker. Regarding the climate crisis, the latter prophesies: “If you [the Brazilians] find a solution, then the rest of the world is saved. Because in any place do not combine ecological and political storms with such intensity.”
The intellectual, who died on October 9, could not have been more visionary. This Sunday, October 30, on the occasion of the second round of the presidential election, will indeed compete, in the Brazilian ballot boxes, two men carrying two radically opposite visions of environmental issues. On the left, Luiz Inacio Lula Da Silva, ex-president, defender of the preservation of nature, and on the far right, the outgoing head of state Jair Bolsonaro, favorable to the limitless exploitation of it.
Bruno Latour was not mistaken: the 156 million Brazilian voters will have a good part of the future of the planet in their hand. The Latin American giant, vast like Europe, is home to almost a fifth of world biodiversity and, above all, welcomes one of the largest carbon wells on the planet: the Amazonian forest, including 60 % of the extent is in Brazilian territory. A natural heritage without which no victory against climate change is possible.
unprecedented ransacking
In this title, the “Bolsonaro years” are a disaster. All Brazilian biomes, starting with the Amazon, have suffered an unprecedented rampage since 2019. Nearly 40,000 km 2 of forest have been shaved in four years, the equivalent of a country like Switzerland. Each day, 1.5 million trees are slaughtered in the famous “lung of the planet”, or nearly 4,000 football fields. Unheard of in two decades.
Despite a change of discourse under the combined pressure of Washington and Brussels, the ecocide continues. Between January and September of this year, 9,000 km 2 of forest have disappeared in the Amazon, for the same period, double the year 2018 and nine times more than there are ten year. The worst could be to come. Experts, interviewed recently by the Folha of Sao Paulo, estimated that the re -election of Jair Bolsonaro could lead to record deforestation: up to 27,000 km 2 of jungle destroyed each year from 2026 .
point of “non-return”
The situation is all the more worrying since the Amazonian forest (of which almost a fifth has already been shaved in Brazil) would approach its point of “non-return”, a dramatic fall in precipitation, aggravated droughts , followed by the transformation of whole jungle sides into a savannah. A frightening perspective, which would jeopardize the rich fauna and flora of the forest, and would release in the atmosphere incalculable quantities of co 2 , making vain any fight against climate change on a global scale .
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