Human Rights Watch is calling on Brazil’s president-elect, Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, to “commit to concrete measures to back up his promises on the environment as government representatives gather for the COP27 climate summit meeting in Egypt.”
COP27 is the 27th annual U.N. climate change conference, being held November 6-18 in Sharm El-Sheikh. Da Silva, widely known as Lula, and incumbent Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro are both expected at the gathering.
“As COP27 begins a week after his election, Lula should specify how he plans to uphold the rule of law in the Amazon and protect both the forest and its defenders as soon as he takes office,” Human Rights Watch Brazil Director Maria Laura Canineu said in a statement.
According to the rights organization, in 2003, when Da Silva first took presidential office, he inherited one of the highest Amazon deforestation rates on record, but that rate dropped by 67% by the end of his second term in 2010.
In comparison, Human Rights Watch said, “Under Bolsonaro, deforestation in the Amazon increased 73 percent in 2021 compared with 2018, its highest level in 15 years. About 34,000 square kilometers of the Amazon rainforest were cleared between 2019 and 2021, according to official data. Nearly 99 percent of deforestation recorded in 2021 had some irregularity indicating illegality.”
Human Rights Watch said the Lula transition team “should prepare a strategy ... to reverse the rampant environmental destruction that has taken place under Bolsonaro’s presidency.”
Canineu urged the outside world to closely monitor “the situation in the Amazon and support efforts to fight deforestation and protect forest defenders.”
