Jair Bolsonaro in 2020. Marcos Corrêa via Flickr
As president of Brazil, Jair Bolsonaro not only weakened environmental regulations and gutted agencies charged with protecting the Amazon, he also railed against conservation. An analysis of his tweets and those of his ministers finds a link between their rhetoric and the acres of forest lost.
The study looked at thousands of tweets from Bolsonaro and his ministers of agriculture, environment, and foreign affairs from 2019, their first year in office. It identified 38 posts which signaled that illicit deforesters faced little risk of reprisal from the government.
Comparing these posts against a database of Amazon deforestation, the study found that forest clearing surged in the months when Bolsonaro and his ministers inveighed against conservation on Twitter. In 2019 alone, it estimates, such tweets were linked with the destruction of as many as 420,000 acres of rainforest. The findings were published in The Journal of Politics.
In 2022, Bolsonaro was defeated in his bid for reelection by Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, who has since ramped up enforcement in the Amazon, leading to a sharp drop in acres cleared. This year, deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon is on track to hit its lowest level on record.
A new analysis from Carbon Brief finds that, compared to a scenario in which Bolsonaro won a second term and deforestation remained high, Lula has managed to save 5 million acres of rainforest, an area roughly the size of New Jersey.
This week, Brazilians will head to the polls to decide their next president in a contest that will pit Lula against Flávio Bolsonaro, son of the former president. Flávio has taken a similar stance on environmental protection as his father. Analysts say the election, in which the candidates are tied in the polls, could be hugely consequential for the future of the Amazon rainforest.
