Brazil’s Presidential Election Could Mean Billions of Tons of Additional Greenhouse Gases

Policies leading to more destruction of the Amazon and Cerrado would have a huge impact on climate change.

Environmentalists and scientists fear that Brazil’s newly elected president, the far-right politician Jair Bolsonaro, will accelerate the destruction of the nation’s Amazon rainforest and Cerrado savanna, which rank among the world’s largest storehouses of carbon.

Both absorb massive amounts of greenhouse gas from the air, stocking it away in trees, grasses, roots, and soil.  Bolsonaro’s campaign rhetoric and ties to agribusiness have led observers to fear he’ll push to loosen environmental rules and monitoring, says Tica Minami, coordinator of Greenpeace Brazil’s Amazon campaign.  That could embolden farmers to burn down or otherwise clear more land for soybeans, sugarcane, and cattle, releasing vast quantities of carbon dioxide back into the atmosphere.

Already, as much as 15% of global climate emissions come from “deforestation and degradation of tropical forests,” studies have found.

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