Open letter to the participants of the Leaders’ Summit on Climate

The Arns Commission forwarded an open letter to the authorities of the Climate Summit that alerts the international leaderships about the distance between what the Brazilian authorities are currently disclosing and the actual reality of the country, which is marked by an increase in deforestation in the Amazon, risks for Indigenous peoples, and the impacts of mining in environmental protection areas, among other problems.

The text points out Brazil's conditions to face the political, economic, and legislative challenges regarding environmental protection and also the protagonism of environmental issues in the world agenda. However, it reveals that these achievements have been reversed by Jair Bolsonaro's government, who puts in doubt the reality of climate change, threatens to withdraw the country from the Paris Agreement, questions scientific evidence, demonizes environmentalists and human rights activists, disdains the cultural traditions of Indigenous peoples, and publicly fraternizes with practitioners of different illicit acts.

“At the level of action, the government has been systematically weakening environmental bodies. He has revised regulations, made norms more flexible, revoked legal provisions, altered the composition of public agencies in charge of monitoring and the application of fines, replaced competent heads of organizations with people without appropriate qualifications – if not for those who are partners in environmental devastation – persecuted employees, reduced the budget for the environment [...] Among the draft bills in Congress that the government considers priorities, four weaken, in different ways, the protection of the environment, with serious consequences for the Amazon and for the way of life of Indigenous populations," the letter denounces.

The Arns Commission believes that the environment must be defended by all, as a human right. In this sense, its manifestation presents a more realistic picture of what is happening in Brazil, with respect to the preservation of natural resources and traditional communities, and demands from the country's representatives in this conference clear commitments, defined deadlines, precise goals, and metrics to measure results.