Thread by @OrangoQuango

It just so happened that, as the Amazon crisis hit, I was going to Helsinki to give a talk about the global significance of Bolsonaro's presidency. Everyone here is very concerned with what is going on, especially given Finland is presently occupying the EU presidency. >>>

Owing to this, there was a great turn out for the talk yesterday and a lot of discussion (more on which later), and what was supposed to be a short interview for Helsingi Sanomat ended up being a pretty long piece. In a nutshell, here's what I said. >>>

The new trade deal between the EU and Mercosur highlights highlights an inevitable contradiction between the interests of European consumers and the interest that European citizens have in the Amazon, since it confirms and entrenches Brazil's position as an exporter of primary >>

commodities. For as long as that is the case, there will be pressure to expand Brazil's agricultural frontier and extractive activities, which means that the agribusiness, mining and energy sectors will continue to encroach on the Amazon and indigenous land. In the long run, >>

if people outside of Brazil are serious about protecting the rainforest, they will have to also be serious about supporting a transformation of the global system that makes it possible for Brazil to transition towards a different kind of economy. But that contradiction also means

European consumers have a certain leverage that they can deploy as citizens: they can boycott companies and products that at any point in their supply chain are complicit with the destruction of the rainforest and/or attacks on indigenous land and lives. >>

@AmazonWatch and @ApibOficial have recently issued a report laying out what the most important of those companies and products are. amazonwatch.org/assets/files/2… But it is important that this isn't just about individual consumer choices; it must be public, organised, political. >>>

It is about putting pressure on businesses and states outside of Brazil that buy from these companies, as well as on any financial actors that directly (banks) or indirectly (pension funds) invest in them. Think of it as training for the struggles over the environment to come. >>

What is the rationale for a boycott? First and foremost, the Bolsonaro government cannot be reasoned with; it is ideologically committed to ecocide and the murderous "integration" of indigenous people, as well as to a pathological necessity to "own the libs" at whatever cost. >>

But it is responsive to losing support from the primary sector, the suicidal locomotive of Brazilian economy, and that would inevitably happen if its political stance turned out to be bad for business. Hurting these economic interests also matters for the reason laid out above:

for as long as things are set in terms of "what is good for them is good for Brazil", economic incentives will be massively stacked in favour of environmental destruction and against indigenous lives. >>

A further reason is we don't have forever to act on this. First, because of the ecological effect. The Amazon has for a couple of decades now seen the largest droughts in its history, and scientists stipulated some time ago that it has a deforestation tipping point beyond which >

the feedback loops that sustain the rainforest would break down, and it would turn into savanna. For a while that was estimated at around 40% of loss of forest cover, but in the light of new data and climate change scientists now believe it may be as low as 25%. Bolsonaro is >

setting us on a path to hit that mark soon. Given that the Amazon's main contribution to the global climate system is cooling it down, the knock-on effect it would have in an already warming world would be devastating. >>

Secondly, because of the cost in human lives and cultures. The attack on the Amazon inevitably entails an attack on indigenous land and people, and the government has been very clear about whose side it is on. To give but a particularly egregious example:

the minister for the environment recently travelled to the Amazon to meet with illegal loggers who had burnt a truck of the environmental protection agency two weeks before, and told them they represented "the good citizens who want to work". The subtext is obvious: >>

the government is saying they have the back of people who are invading indigenous land *whatever they do*. And so the last, though certainly not least, reason to support a boycott would be this: it is Brazilian indigenous leaders themselves who are calling for it. >>

More info on the latter here: tinyurl.com/y2p27ogp. For those of you who speak Finnish, or fancy seeing a very respectable looking picture of me, here's the interview with Helsingin Sanomat: tinyurl.com/yythkbov. For a longer version of this thread: tinyurl.com/y5aq2g9y