With attention focused on the escalating healthcare crisis in Brazil, the administration of Jair Bolsonaro is attempting to push through new rules which would weaken safeguards against the invasion of indigenous lands and the deforestation of the Amazon.
Despite the pandemic, congress may soon take a hasty online vote on legislation that would effectively hand over swathes of illegally seized and deforested land to large-scale illegal land-grabbers, while Brazil’s Indigenous agency Funai has slashed its protection for undemarcated indigenous lands.
The moves come as deforestation – and attacks on land belonging to indigenous communities – are soaring during the pandemic.
In March, while much of the rest of the country stayed at home, deforestation rose by 30% compared to the same month a year ago, according to the country’s space research agency, INPE. Deforestation alerts for the first three months of this year were 51% higher than last year, with an area roughly the size of New York City lost in those three months alone.
The most recent data available shows that for the first 16 days of April alone, deforestation alerts were 208 sq km, only slightly less than the 247 sq km of alerts for the entire month last year.
The latest move could further accelerate the trend.
Provisional Measure 910 – to legalise many land-grabs up to 2018 – may be voted on in the next few weeks through an ‘emergency’ online only vote, minimising debate and scrutiny and allowing the government to pass it before the current proposal expires.
This new legislation is significant, analysts say, because it could allow huge swathes of illegally cut down and occupied land – often taken by criminal gangs – to be bought by those who have taken them for a fraction of their real value.
Meanwhile, a rule passed by Funai’s president last week, IN 09, strips yet-to-be-demarcated but indigenous lands of their designation as “indigenous” in the land registry, regardless of whether or not indigenous people, including isolated tribes, live on it.
The technical rule-change is highly significant as it will allow people occupying indigenous land – usually for the purpose of deforestation and agriculture or mining – to obtain a certificate that the land is undemarcated. This certificate can subsequently be used in support of a land-grabber’s claim to legalise property on that land under the new law, MP 910.
Most read
Breaking down the Amazon: how deforestation could drive the next pandemic
Documents reveal airline industry plan for tax breaks, subsidies and voucher refunds
Mapped: nitrogen dioxide pollution around the world
