Brazil’s Environment Risks Political Capsize

A serious political crisis over demands for its president to step down is adding to the threats to Brazil’s environment.

Brazil faces an unpredictable political crisis as the country’s president fights demands for him to leave office.  And as the price of his survival, he is making damaging concessions on Brazil’s environment.

President Michel Temer is facing calls to resign after the owners of Brazil’s biggest meat-packing industry, JBS, alleged he had been involved in bribery and the obstruction of justice.

To retain support in congress, he is now working with the powerful farmers’ lobby, the bancada ruralista, which wants to reduce conservation areas and weaken environmental licensing laws.

He hopes to cling to power by making concessions to the bancada.  In exchange for support from the Parliamentary Agriculture Front (FPA), the bancada’s formal name, he tore up the government’s project for modernising the environmental licensing law, telling lobby members they could present whatever amendments to it they liked.

So a congressional committee is now about to approve a radically different version of the government’s original proposal for a new General Licensing Law.

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