Jake Spring Profile picture
Sep 22, 2020 11 tweets 3 min read Read on X
President Jair Bolsonaro's speech to the UN just now, a significant portion of which is dedicated to defending Brazil's environmental record. Largely the same arguments he has been making domestically but just on the global stage.
Bolsonaro said that Brazil is the victim of a brutal misinformation campaign about the Amazon. While the govt has faced fierce criticism on it, it's unclear what the incorrect information is. Fires in the Amazon are at a 10-year high YTD and an all-time high in the Pantanal.
He blamed shady interests behind the criticisms of Brazil on enviro. You can find out most parties behind, say, the #defundbolsonaro campaign, such as indigenous group APIB if you look. EU farmers meanwhile overtly see Brazil as a competitor and don't want to let in its products.
Bolsonaro told the UN that he has a zero tolerance policy for environmental crimes. But looking at the data, Amazon rainforest fires are up, 2020's official deforestation measure will be way up, while environmental fines have been falling.
Bolsonaro touted the fact that Brazil has preserved 66% of its territory, which is true. Yet scientists such as Carlos Nobre say as little as 3% more of the Amazon needs to be destroyed to put it into a death spiral in which it dries out turns into savanna, releasing a lot of CO2
He said that the Amazon is a humid forest and doesn't allow fires to spread. While the Amazon is naturally fire-resistant, fires in forest (not agriculture areas or deforested areas) accounted for 43% of the major Amazon fires in September maaproject.org/2020/amazon-fi…
Bolsonaro said the fires are the same areas being burned repeatedly and are set by indigenous to their farmland in areas that are already cleared. But 43% of the fires in September are in virgin forest, while 49% are in areas newly deforested from 2018-20 maaproject.org/2020/amazon-fi…
Bolsonaro said that Brazil did everything it could to agree to rules on effective carbon markets at COP25 UN climate conference. But Brazil's demands that old Kyoto carbon credits be counted, which would dilute the market so much as to undermine it, were a key reason talks failed
He said high temperatures and accumulated decaying organic matter make fire inevitable. But fire in Amazon is set by humans, not natural, plus much organic matter on the ground is from human deforestation. Fire can be natural in Pantanal, but most fires believed to be human set
Bolsonaro said that the Amazon region - the size of western Europe - is so vast it is hard to police. This is undoubtedly true. He also said Brazil has sent the military to the Amazon as part of enhanced enviro protection efforts.
Hardest to unpack is that Brazil is pushing land regularization (handing out deeds to squatters on public land) to bring enviro criminals to justice. Con: Gives amnesty to past enviro crimes, possibly ups legal deforestation Pro: make those with deeds easier to police in future

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More from @jakespring

Jun 3, 2023
🧵 If reforestation could work anywhere, it's in Brazil's Amazon rainforest. I followed two reforestation projects for 3+ years to find out why it's so hard. Threats at gunpoint, botanical mysteries, here's what I found. 1/

reuters.com/investigates/s…
In August 2019, fires surged in the Amazon. I saw firsthand the scenes that so outraged the public.

As I looked ahead to the next year, I wanted to try to report on those seeking to restore the rainforest, rather than only reporting on destruction. 2/

reuters.com/article/uk-bra… By Ueslei Marcelino/Reuters
I read an essay by famed scientists Thomas Lovejoy & Carlos Nobre that inspired me to look into reforestation. Nobre believes restoring the Amazon will help ensure it doesn’t cross a tipping point beyond which the rainforest would not sustain itself 3/ science.org/doi/10.1126/sc…
Read 19 tweets
May 16, 2023
🧵Researchers are betting that the next pathogen to spark a pandemic will come from the Amazon rainforest. And yet that risk is ill-understood

For this story, I traveled to bat caves and sites of deforestation in Brazil. Here's the story behind the story reuters.com/investigates/s…
I followed bat researchers to the massive Planaltina cavern near the Transamazon highway in Northern Brazil. The cave extends more than 1.5 km underground and is home to thousands of bats. 2/ Image
The bat researchers set up nets to either side of the cave just before nightfall to capture bats as they flew out in search of food. Within 40 minutes, they had caught about 200 bats. 3/ ImageImageImage
Read 8 tweets
Oct 30, 2022
The lungs of the Earth will breathe easier tonight 🌳 🌳 🌳

Lula officially wins the Brazil presidential election promising to stop deforestation in Brazil’s Amazon rainforest, after four years of surging destruction under Bolsonaro. 🧵 1/ Image
Context on why this election meant so much for the Amazon rainforest 2/ reuters.com/world/americas…
Ok ok ok, I know the Amazon isn’t really the lungs of the earth (they are not the largest source of oxygen) but allow me some poetic license 3/ theatlantic.com/science/archiv…
Read 4 tweets
May 30, 2022
I can summarize the collective response to my story last week as "WTF?" Brazil's Bolsonaro bolstered the environmental fines system, a move that could help protect the Amazon. It can be hard to understand what the govt is doing. Here's a 🧵w/ some context reuters.com/business/healt…
First, a note on environmental fines. Yes, the % of fines collected in Brazil has always been low. But talk to any Ibama agent: Fines do matter. Even if someone doesn't pay a fine, it is on their record and can prevent them from selling their crops for export or getting a loan.
I've been tracking the Bolsonaro government's policy on fines since 2019. My article last week is a follow up to this story last year on how Bolsonaro policy led the fines system to break down. reuters.com/world/americas…
Read 8 tweets
Mar 24, 2021
What happened out in the jungle? 19 months after Brazil deployed troops to protect the Amazon rainforest, there is high deforestation and a massive bill. I spoke to dozens of sources to find out why they failed: an ill-prepared, reluctant military THREAD reuters.com/investigates/s…
Despite asking many times in my 10 months of investigating, the military refused to let me accompany any field operations. I did at least interview a Vice Admiral w/ the Defense Ministry who gave insight into how the military sees the operation as protecting Brazil's sovereignty.
Key Findings 1) The military nixed raids on certain targets with no explanation 2) Soldiers could not distinguish between which tree species are legal to cut down 3) Massive 5-ton military trucks doubled travel times to get to deforestation and made stealthy raids impossible
Read 8 tweets
Aug 20, 2020
PSA for those monitoring Amazon forest fires: Yes there has been a problem with the official Brazil govt fire data from Inpe since August 16. Most of the data is missing for that day, so in the official table it shows an unusually low number. queimadas.dgi.inpe.br/queimadas/port…
Speaking with Brazil govt space agency INPE, there was a problem with the transmission from the NASA satellite (which monitors for fires) for that day. INPE is attempting to get the data another way and retroactively correct in the next few days ladsweb.modaps.eosdis.nasa.gov/alerts-and-iss…
There is a backup system they've been using for Aug 17 & 18 but it excludes the far north of the Amazon. But right now alternative satellites show little activity there (it is still the rainy season up there), so the reference satellite probably isn't missing much.
Read 5 tweets

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