Brazil’s government has cut the funding for the fight against climate change almost completely. The reports in the local Newspapers and refer to the budget of the competent Ministry of the environment. There is only about 2.7 million euros were, therefore, already for action against climate change and have now been reduced by 95 percent.
As reported in the media, reduces the environmental Ministry of his overall budget by around a quarter. For programs for the prevention of waste are reported to be around 80 percent less for measures against forest fires in the 40 percent less.
environmentalists and critics of the government in Brasilia had expected these cuts, after President Jair Messias Bolsonaro was started in January with the promise to loosen environmental regulations. In addition, he had not excluded, as the United States, from the Paris climate agreement by 2015 to get off. For the environmental movement, this would be a devastating decision, Brazil with its natural resources – it has the largest tropical forest and the world’s most important reserves of fresh water – as critical to the success of a global climate policy.
Significantly more deforestation in the Amazon
The human rights organization Amnesty International refers in the context to the Situation of the indigenous population in the South American country, which are affected by the funding cuts. So the government provides less and less money for the Monitoring of rain forest in the Amazon region and for the work of the authority for the protection of Indigenous (FUNAI). Thus, illegal land-grabbing, deforestation in indigenous areas, and conflicts of it.
“We fear that to make it violent clashes between indigenous communities and the people trespassing in their country, will come together,” says the head of the Department of politics and Activism at Amnesty International in Germany, Julia Duchrow. “The indigenous population in the Amazon areas, fighting on the frontline for the protection of the most valuable forests in the world.”
According to information provided by the non-governmental organization Imazon 110 square kilometers of forest were lost in the first three months of this year, in indigenous areas of the Amazon, 82 per cent more as compared to 2018.
