During his election campaign, Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva (77), who has been in power for two months, promised an end to the unbridled destruction of the environment as under his predecessor Jair Bolsonaro. Now the head of state is facing increasing international pressure to keep his promise to make Brazil a reliable partner again in the fight against global warming.
Because the promises of Lula da Silva have not come true so far. On the contrary: As the state monitoring program “Deter” announced over the weekend, 322 square kilometers of rainforest were destroyed in the Brazilian part of the Amazon in February. That is an unbelievable increase of 62 percent compared to the same month last year – and that was already the worst in recent memory.
Outside the rainforest in the savannah area to the south, even 558 square kilometers of nature were destroyed, which is almost twice as much as in the negative record year 2020. On February 17, the record for deforestation in one month was broken in Brazil.
President Lula da Silva raised a lot of money internationally in an Amazon fund with his promise to stop the endless destruction of nature. 545 million euros were made available for reforestation alone. When and if this will happen at all remains unclear.
The environmental protection organization Greenpeace has warned the Brazilian President against sticking with programs like those from his first term in office: “These are different times, that’s not enough. Much more work is needed,” spokesman Romulo Batista said. So far there is nothing to see.
