Instead of insisting that the Amazon was “practically untouched” by fires or blaming a “lying and sensationalist media” for stirring up controversy over Brazil’s environmental policies, as he did at the United Nations General Assembly in 2019 and on countless other occasions since, a visibly subdued Bolsonaro vowed to end illegal deforestation by 2030 and achieve emission neutrality by 2050.
Since the moment the speech ended, diplomats from Brussels to Washington to Beijing, as well as civil society and the 35 million residents of the Amazon basin itself, have been debating how much stock to place in Bolsonaro’s words—if any at all, given his record.
Trump’s climate skepticism had given Bolsonaro some cover from global criticism, not to mention boycotts and other sanctions, as deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon rose to a 12-year high in 2020.
In March, Bolsonaro fired his divisive foreign minister, Ernesto Araújo, a professed “anti-globalist” who had called Biden “poorly informed” on the Amazon issue, in what seemed like recognition that the world has changed.
For its part, the Biden administration—particularly through its climate envoy, John Kerry, and its diplomats on the ground in Brazil—deserves credit for helping create an atmosphere in which Bolsonaro can make changes without feeling cornered.
diplomat told me, “Brazil discovered that it couldn’t trade the Amazon for China”—meaning that cooperating with Washington in its escalating rivalry with Beijing would not be enough to convince the United States to stay silent during the upcoming fire season.
His environmental policies have always been out of step with public opinion: a recent IBOPE poll found that 92 percent of Brazilians believe that climate change is real, and 77 percent said that protecting the environment should be a priority even if doing so damages the economy.
And he may anticipate a need to further reduce his number of vulnerable flanks in the months ahead: Brazil’s Congress just began an inquiry into Bolsonaro’s handling of the COVID-19 pandemic, which has left a higher confirmed death toll in Brazil than anywhere but the United States.
Mindful of this record and fully aware that Bolsonaro may only be fibbing, the White House has said that it is not willing to wait until 2030 to see progress—rather, it wants to see deforestation in Brazil fall year-over-year in 2021.
But Bolsonaro made only one significant short-term announcement at the climate summit and that was a proposed doubling of money for “environmental monitoring.” Such a measure would increase the budget for such efforts only by about $50 million, which environmental groups say would be unlikely to make much difference.
But their focus will now shift to the numbers: satellite data tracking fires and forest cover loss, which will be impossible for Brazil to obfuscate or explain away.
The options range from a hardening of the rhetoric from the White House to a withdrawal of support for Brazil’s OECD membership—or even, some observers say, punitive tariffs similar to those Trump employed against China, on the grounds that Brazil’s management of the Amazon poses a threat to U.S.