Brazilian states are bolstering the fight against the destruction of the Amazon rainforest with millions of dollars from an oil company’s corruption settlement that allows them to partially compensate for weakening environmental protections under Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro.
State environmental agencies would have a one-off windfall that would total at least 140 million reais (US$27.35 million).
The cash, which comes from a massive settlement payment from state-run oil firm Petrobras, formally known as Petroleo Brasileiro SA, would be spent on patrol officers, jeeps, surveillance technology and other outlays to protect the rainforest, officials in all nine Amazon states said.
“It fell from the sky. You open and look at your bank balance and there’s money you didn’t even know that you had,” said Roberio Nobre, the head of the environmental agency in Amapa state, on Brazil’s northern border with French Guiana.
The amount of money going to the state environmental agencies has not been previously reported.
Deforestation in Brazil’s Amazon climbed to an 11-year high last year and continues to rise this year.
That has coincided with a decline in resources at the Brazilian Institute of the Environment and Renewable Natural Resources (IBAMA).
Its budget has been repeatedly cut in the past few years, and it now has fewer than half the 1,600 field agents it had in 2009.
Although the fall in funding began before Bolsonaro, environmental advocates blame him for worsening the situation by weakening protections for the rainforest.
Bolsonaro has railed against what he sees as overzealous environmental regulation getting in the way of economic development.
“The transfer of money from the Petrobras Fund comes at an opportune time. The states can fill the vacuum and act as a counterpoint to the federal government,” University of Brasilia environmental policy professor Ana Karine Pereira said.
Petrobras was the center of Brazil’s largest-ever corruption scandal — the “Car Wash” probe — that involved bribes being paid to hundreds of politicians and business leaders to fix public construction contracts.
The oil company admitted wrongdoing related to record keeping and internal controls, ultimately agreeing to pay an US$853 million fine to settle charges that it breached US anti-corruption laws.
US authorities agreed to return most of the proceeds to the Brazilian government.
After fires last year surged in the Amazon rainforest and provoked international outcry, Brazil’s Supreme Court decided to direct a chunk of the funds to environmental protection at the state level.
For normally cash-strapped states, the money has radically expanded budgets.
The environment agency in Para, the Brazilian state with the highest level of deforestation last year, received 49 million reais, double their annual budget of 24 million reais. It would be spent over two years.
Para is hiring an additional 100 environmental field agents to patrol for deforestation and other crimes, 10 times the number of agents they had before.
They would conduct their first raids in June, Para environmental agency head Mauro O’de Almeida said.
Several of the states have lengthy written plans for how the money would be used.
Amapa’s plan, for example, ranges from buying deforestation monitoring equipment to reassessing its protected reserve areas, Nobre said.
Roraima, which borders Venezuela, has a 35-page document that pledges to promote sustainable agriculture and educate locals on fire prevention.
State environmental agency head Ionilson Souza said that some of the funds would be used to hire firefighters in October when forest fires usually peak.
Not all states would spend the money on the environment. The Supreme Court last month decided that four states would be allowed to redirect the funds, partially or in full, to fighting COVID-19.
The Bolsonaro government has sought to militarize environmental enforcement, sending thousands of soldiers to the Amazon last month to combat deforestation.
Environmental advocates say the military cannot effectively replace permanent oversight by specialist agencies like IBAMA.
Brazilian Vice President Hamilton Mourao, a retired general presiding over the operation, has said that sending in the military was not ideal, but is the best option available to the cash-strapped government.
He last month said that the ultimate goal is to build up IBAMA’s staffing and funding by 2022, when Bolsonaro’s first term would end.
States say they are picking up the slack.
“We’re not waiting for help. We’re doing our part,” O’de Almeida said.
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