(Brasilia) Brazil’s President Jair Bolsonaro and his Environment Minister Joaquim Leite both knew before the UN climate summit in Glasgow that the rate of deforestation in the Amazon had jumped . However, they preferred to withhold the information.
According to three ministers who agreed to speak to the Associated Press on condition of anonymity, the president withheld the data so as not to harm the negotiations.
These data from the National Institute for Space Research’s Prodes monitoring system, released Thursday, reveal that the Amazon lost 13,235 square kilometers of rainforest during the 12-month baseline period from August 2020. until July 2021.
This is an increase of 22% from the previous analysis period and the worst rate in 15 years.
The three ministers and an official from the space institute confirm that the data was available long before the negotiations which began on October 31 in Glasgow.
Six days earlier, during a meeting at the presidential palace, Jair Bolsonaro and several ministers discussed the 2020-2021 deforestation results and agreed not to make them public until the end of the climate summit.
Two of the three ministers who spoke with the PA attended the meeting.
On the same day that this decision was taken, the government set up a program to promote green development. The speeches of the leaders then took on the air of repetition in order to project an eco-responsible image in Glasgow after two years of historically high deforestation.
One of the two ministers who attended the controversial meeting said the government’s decision to withhold the data was part of a strategy to rebuild its environmental credibility in the eyes of the international community.
According to the same minister, it was not a question of lying, but rather to put forward the more positive data, including a decline observed in the preliminary data on deforestation according to another monitoring system called Deter. .
Bolsonaro bragged about the data during his speech to the United Nations General Assembly in September. However, data from the Deter system has also skyrocketed since then. Strengthening the evidence that deforestation continues to accelerate.
Data from the Deter system are available on a monthly basis and are considered as indicators pending more comprehensive annual results from the Prodes system, which relies on satellite imagery.
Following the official unveiling of the Prodes data on Thursday, Mr Leite told reporters the data does not reflect commitments the government has made in recent months. He also denied having seen the data before going to Glasgow.
President Bolsonaro, who has long promoted the development of the Amazon, including mining in indigenous territories, simply did not show up in Scotland after having participated in the G20 meeting in Rome.
Communications from the Ministry of the Environment and the Presidency did not respond to AP’s requests to know when MM. Leite and Bolsonaro have been told about the deforestation data and why their release has been delayed.
In Glasgow, Minister Leite announced that Brazil is committed to completely eradicating illegal deforestation by 2028, two years later than expected, and to reducing its greenhouse gas emissions by 2030. by 50%.