Green groups denounce Brazil's 'sham' Amazon tour for foreign diplomats
Source: The Guardian
Green groups denounce Brazil's 'sham' Amazon tour for foreign diplomats
Campaigners say visit was ‘media propaganda’ as officials failed to stop at any devastated rainforest areas
Dom Phillips in Rio de Janeiro
Sat 7 Nov 2020 08.00 GMT
Environmentalists have criticised a three-day tour of the Amazon that the Brazilian government staged for foreign ambassadors as a “sham” and “media propaganda” after it failed to stop at any environmentally devastated areas.
The tour ended on Friday and focused on better-protected areas of the northern Amazon. “The government prepared an itinerary that does not show the reality of the Amazon – the abandonment of indigenous peoples, the land grabbing, the illegal mining and the uncontrolled deforestation. It is a sham,” said Marcio Astrini, executive director of the Climate Observatory, an umbrella group of environmental NGOs.
Brazil’s vice-president, Hamilton Mourão, who hosted the tour and heads the government’s Amazon council, said seeing the effects of Amazon deforestation and fires close up was “not necessary”.
Analysts said the tour was a sop to European governments wavering on ratifying a trade deal between the EU and the South American trade block Mercosur. Amazon deforestation and fires have accelerated since Jair Bolsonaro took office as Brazil’s president in January 2019 with an anti-environmental agenda, promising to develop the region.
“Governments in favour of ratification want Brazil to do things like that in order to help them to make a case … back in their capitals,” said Oliver Stuenkel, a professor of international relations at the Getulio Vargas Foundation, a São Paulo business school.
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Read more: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/nov/07/green-groups-denounce-brazils-sham-amazon-tour-for-foreign-diplomats