By Jeferson Choma
The capital São Paulo and a large part of the country’s cities are living under a blanket of smoke. Earlier this week, the capital of São Paulo became the most polluted metropolis in the world. But it inherited this title from cities in the western Amazon, which last month was the most polluted region in the world. In São Paulo, smoke from fires in the Amazon, the Pantanal, and parts of the Cerrado, mixed with the dust particles released by uninterrupted construction work, fueled by monstrous real estate speculation, and with the smoke coming out of the exhaust pipes of the more than 6.2 million cars that make up the city’s vehicle fleet.
It looks like a scene from Mad Max or Blade Runner. But these are the consequences of the huge fires that are sweeping virtually the entire country. From January 1 to September 11, Brazil registered 172,815 wildfires, according to the National Institute of Space Research (Inpe). Of these, 86,195 are located in the Amazon and 56,363 in the Cerrado. The country is experiencing its worst drought since 1950, as a consequence of extreme weather phenomena caused by global warming. Last year was the hottest year in the last 125,000 years, but 2024 is expected to surpass that mark. The flood catastrophe in Rio Grande do Sul in May and the current heat wave and drought are signs of the country’s “new normal” climate. It is happening so fast that it has surprised even one of the country’s top climate authorities. “I am terrified. Nobody foresaw this; it’s very fast,” said Carlos Nobre in an interview to Estado de S. Paulo (12/09), about the frightening dynamics of extreme weather phenomena observed in Brazil and in the world and caused by global warming.
Who is responsible for this situation? It is not the whole of humanity, but a small part of it formed by big businessmen and capitalist landowners. The average global temperature of the Earth has increased due to the voracious consumption of fossil fuels that run through the veins of capital accumulation and have continuously released tons of Greenhouse Gases (GHG) into the atmosphere. But, if in the imperialist countries the great villains are industry and transport, over here, in Brazilian peripheral capitalism, the greatest emitters of GHG are agriculture and deforestation. Together, they release more than 75% of national emissions, making clear the questionability of the current agricultural model promoted by the capitalist state.
Road, fire and destruction
Nine cities in the Amazon are at the top of the list of the ten municipalities that recorded the largest fires since the start of the year. These include São Félix do Xingu (PA), a city with the largest herd of cattle in the country; Altamira (PA), Apuí (AM), Itaituba (PA) and Labreá (AM), which are all crossed by the Trans-Amazon highway; and Novo Progresso (PA), on the edge of highway BR-163, where soybean cultivation is expanding from the north of Mato Grosso.
There is a truism about roads in the Amazon: where there are roads, there is also deforestation and fires. After all, these were built by the dictatorship to promote the advance of national and foreign capital in mineral resources and to occupy the region with agriculture. It is no coincidence that Chico Mendes, leader of the sertingueiro [rubber] movement, became world famous when he succeeded in getting the World Bank to stop financing BR-364. This was one of the main episodes that led the big ranchers to sign their death warrant. His martyrdom helped preserve the Amazon, but for how long?
Satellite images are the greatest proof that the fires in these regions indicate the opening of new agricultural frontiers for the capitalist agricultural model called agribusiness. They are large landowners and speculators who appropriate public lands on the margins of the BR-163 and the Transamazonica. They are also preparing for the invasion of National Parks or Indigenous Lands. And they have powerful allies.
A project that will lead to environmental collapse
It is the Brazilian State (and all the governments in power) that finances the environmental destruction caused by agribusiness. Since the government of Fernando Henrique Cardoso (PSDB), the sector has received generous public credits to finance its expansion and growth. At the time, the government viewed this financing as a “solution” to the country’s trade balance deficit and a way of continuing to attract dollars to pay interest and repayment of the public debt.
In Lula’s (PT) first terms, the sector received even more rewards. In addition to increased public financing for the sector, the government also stimulated the growth of agriculture as a way of projecting internationally the most successful Brazilian companies (the “national champions”), many of them linked to agribusiness. The PT governments thus sought to create a supposed “national bourgeoisie” to promote the reindustrialization of the country. But the result was very different. The country continued on the path of becoming a mere exporter of agricultural and low-tech products at the expense of the deindustrialization of other sectors of the economy. Its only role was to deepen Brazil’s dependence on international monopoly capital.
The farce of the past is repeating itself as tragedy when the government announces more than 400 billion reais for big agribusiness through the Safra Plan. While it has proposed only 70 billion reais for peasant family agriculture, which really produces food for the population. It is this mountain of money that finances the expansion of agribusiness on the ashes of the Amazon, the Cerrado and the Pantanal.
As if that were not enough, the government has also announced its support for the reconstruction of BR-319 (connecting Porto Velho to Manaus), which will bring the destruction of agribusiness to one of the most preserved areas of the rainforest, right in the heart of the Brazilian Amazon. And it has also declared that it is a measure that will mitigate the effects of the climate crisis in the region (!). How is this possible?
BR-319 can be called the “highway of the end of the world”. Its reconstruction will be the death sentence for one of the most preserved areas of the Amazon and will leave the forest very close to the so-called point of no return, when the forest begins to emit more carbon dioxide (CO2) than it absorbs, aggravating global warming. In addition, rainfall will also decrease throughout Central-South Brazil. All this is well explained by important scientists such as Philip Fearnside, who for years has been studying the possible impacts of the reconstruction of BR-319.
In addition to this project of destruction that will lead us to climate collapse, there is also the attempt to explore for oil at the mouth of the Amazon River, which will only serve the big international oil companies, threaten the Amazon biome and its traditional peoples, and further deepen the country’s subordinate role in the world economy.
A Congress of landowners
The landowners dominate the National Congress. In the midst of the catastrophe that has been announced, the parliamentarians are preparing an attack of historic proportions against the environment, the peoples of the jungle, and the entire population with the so-called “Destruction Package” that groups bills that favor the theft of public lands, the use of pesticides, the annulment of environmental licenses, and attacks on indigenous lands with the approval of mining in these territories and the hindrance of new indigenous land demarcations. The Proposed Amendment to the Constitution (PEC) for beach privatization is just the tip of this monstrous iceberg.
The landowners in Congress are unwrapping the package and many of their projects are advancing by leaps and bounds. To stop it, much mobilization will be necessary, and not only by the indigenous peoples, quilombolas and traditional peasants, but of the entire working class. The approval of these measures will seal the fate of the majority of the population in the coming years. It will decide whether or not we will have more catastrophes like the one in Brumadinho (MG), or floods like the one in Rio Grande do Sul, and droughts and fires as we see today. Perhaps all these horrible catastrophes are just child’s play compared to what will come if the Destruction Package is approved (see the package here).
STF wants to negotiate non-negotiable rights
As it could not be otherwise, the political weight of large landowners in Brazil is also reflected in the decisions of the Supreme Federal Court (STF). At this moment, the Supreme Court is discussing at a “conciliation table” the Temporary Framework and other attacks on native peoples under Law 14701/23. This is an attempt to suppress articles of the Constitution that guarantee rights to indigenous peoples.
Law 14.701/2023 is absolutely unconstitutional and there can be no possible negotiation on it, so it must be suspended immediately. The conciliation table was created by order of Minister Gilmar Mendes, rapporteur of the processes and historical ally of the large landowners. Quite rightly, the Articulation of Indigenous Peoples (Apib) recently announced its withdrawal from the STF Conciliation Table. “By the letter of the Constitution of the Republic of 1988, the indigenous lands were registered as inalienable, unavailable, and the rights over them, imprescriptible. Any negotiation on fundamental rights is inadmissible”, stated the indigenous people in a letter.
Even so, the conciliation table continues its work with an organ of the Executive Power, the Forum of Governors, the National College of State Attorneys, the National Confederation of Municipalities, the National Front of Mayors and many people interested in stealing the lands of the original peoples.
The indigenous peoples, with their ancestral cosmology and culture, are the greatest defenders of the forests. Only 1.6% of the loss of Native Forest and Vegetation in Brazil between 1985 and 2020 occurred on indigenous lands. The data comes from the analysis of satellite images. It is also from above that one can see the real encirclement of their territories promoted by the latifundia. The integrity of their territories and their wisdom with nature is what prevents the sky from falling, as Davi Kopenawa Yanomami teaches us.
The coming catastrophe and how to combat it
The climate crisis is here to stay and it is not enough for the government to decree a “climate emergency” to combat it and prevent the worst. Much more is needed. A deep and radical change in the country is needed so that the poor and working population are not the main victims.
Any GHG reduction plan in Brazil requires the expropriation of agribusiness lands, without compensation to their owners. These lands should be used to recompose the ecological systems and water resources. Some of them must also give way to a new model of agroecological and syntropic agriculture (agroforestry farming model based on concepts of syntropy, organization, balance and energy preservation), which actually produces food and not commodities whose prices are defined by the financial capital of the Chicago Stock Exchange. It is also necessary to demarcate all Indigenous Lands, Quilombolas and Extractive Reserves.
Evidently, the country also needs to suspend the opening of new oil exploration frontiers such as the Equatorial Margin and invest heavily in other renewable energy sources, nationalizing all energy resources. Any plan to reindustrialize the country requires a revolution in energy sources, and not the crude fossil neo-developmentalism of 70 years ago. A “developmentalism”, that is only rhetorical and that leads us (as it did) to a greater dependence on imperialism.
It is urgent to invest massively in the recovery of environmental organizations, in the control and fight against fires. To achieve this, it is necessary to implode the fiscal austerity maintained by the fiscal framework that prevents investments in these sectors. The situation is dramatic. More than half of the employees of the Brazilian Institute of Environment and Renewable Natural Resources (Ibama) will retire in 2025.
New extreme weather phenomena will hit the country (rains, landslides, droughts, heat, lack of water, etc.). It is necessary to be prepared to face them by creating a large national public system to combat disasters that is endowed with abundant resources and acts in conjunction with the democratic participation of the most vulnerable population.
Capitalism is leading humanity to climate barbarism. Without overcoming this system, humanity will not be able to stop the catastrophe that is looming. We need a new socialist society in which workers and their allies, indigenous peoples, peasants, quilombolas and youth, effectively hold political and economic power. Only in this way will we face the challenge of revolutionizing the productive forces, radically changing the productive structure of society and establishing a metabolic balance with nature.
Article published in www.opiniaosocialista.com.br, 13/9/2024
