Karla Mendes reports for Mongabay
A wide range of environmental and conservation projects in Brazil are at stake after the government of Germany suspended funds to the country amid the report of alarming rises in monthly Amazon deforestation rates and controversial policies adopted by the administration of far-right President Jair Bolsonaro.
On August 10, German Environment Minister Svenja Schulze reportedly announced Germany’s plans to withdraw some €35 million (US $39.5 million) to Brazil due to the Latin American country’s lack of commitment to curbing deforestation in the Amazon rainforest.
“The policy of the Brazilian government in the Amazon raises doubts as to whether a consistent reduction of deforestation rates is still being pursued,” Schulze told the Tagesspiegel newspaper.
Germany’s move came a week after the head of the Brazilian National Institute of Space Research (INPE), Ricardo Magnus Osório Galvão, was fired, raising concerns over the future of an institution recognized nationally and internationally for its cutting-edge satellite-imaging and deforestation monitoring program.
The Bolsonaro administration has intensely criticized deforestation data released by INPE showing a 2019 spike in cleared area. In July, INPE issued an alert identifying deforestation and degradation totaling some 2,072 square kilometers (800 square miles) for the month of June in Legal Amazonia — a federal designation that includes all or parts of nine Brazilian states — detected by DETER, its real-time detection system. A 2018-2019 month-to-month comparison showed Brazil’s Amazonian deforestation in June 2019 was 88 percent greater than for the same month in 2018, while deforestation in July 2019 was 278 percent higher than July 2018.
Bolsonaro immediately reacted to Germany’s announcement of funding cuts, saying that Brazil doesn’t need German funding to finance conservation projects in the country. “They can use this money as they see fit. Brazil doesn’t need it,” Bolsonaro told journalists in Brasilia on Sunday.
But experts contacted for this story told Mongabay that Bolsonaro’s statements are not accurate, as Brazil has relied for decades on funding from Germany and other countries to finance environmental projects, given the South American country’s budget shortfalls.
