Brazil’s newly elected president plans to industrialize the Amazon and open it to more animal agriculture and mining. Bolsonaro remains intent on opening up the Amazon to the ranchers, miners and logging companies that supported his campaign and plans to eliminate Brazil’s Ministry of Environment. Bolsonaro plans to build a highway through the rainforest, which is also it’s road to destruction.

The environmental and indigenous rights group Amazon Watch has described Bolsonaro’s plan as reckless, saying it will bring untold destruction to the planet’s largest rainforest and threatens the very existence of indigenous peoples and diverse species who call the rainforest home. If these plans go forward, a vital carbon sink would be removed which jeopardizes the global climate.

#AmazonEmergency

 

• Bolsonaro’s platform indicates that he wants to plow through, privatize and sell off the Brazilian rainforest, which is pivotal in cooling the earth as it is the most diverse and tropical rainforest on the planet.
• The fragmentation of the Amazon, through the building of new highways, is pushing the rainforest toward a critical tipping point. Fragmentation makes the rainforest vulnerable to general drying, increased fires as people burn down the forest for animal agriculture, mining, logging and other unsustainable resource exploitation.
• The leading cause of fragmentation and forest loss arises from animal agriculture, including forests converted into grazing land and land to grow animal feed crops. The extremely adverse long-term effects of forest fragmentation include carbon losses as the Amazon loses its ability to act as a carbon sink. (See “Chickens, pigs and the Amazon tipping point” https://bit.ly/2QvjD1S
• Land use and climate change pose risks in the Amazon. The rainforest is predicted to die if temperatures reach 3°C - 4°C above pre-industrial levels, contributing to the permanent loss of rainforest - a persistent El Nino state leading to drying over much of the Amazon basin. This underlines the necessity of stopping climate change as well as highways, animal agriculture, mining and logging to protect the Amazon rainforest.

We ask that:

• Brazil’s President Bolsonaro abandons his plans to privatise the Amazon and legislate and enforce a ban on highways, land clearing, animal agriculture and mining in the Amazon.
• Brazil allow swathes of previously cleared land to regenerate in the Amazon to replenish the land to its natural state and reverse the damage done by animal agriculture and other land uses.
• Offer protection and support to the indigenous peoples that reside there and protect environmental activists and their democratic right to protest.

What you can do:

• You can stop these atrocities now by voting with your wallet and boycotting companies that are involved with destroying the Amazon.
• Share this petition far and wide!
• Switch to a whole foods, vegan/plant-based diet and live cruelty free! Animal agriculture is the leading cause of rainforest destruction and a leading cause of climate change.
• Organize and join globally coordinated actions with environmental rights, human rights and animal rights organizations. Use the hashtags #AmazonEmergency #ClimateAlarm

Please support our work by visiting our website:

http://thesavemovement.org/climate-save-movement/

 

Please also sign our petition to stop the Mercosur EU trade deal;

https://secure.avaaz.org/en/community_petitions/EU_Parliament_STOP_Free_Trade_deal_between_the_EU_and_Mercosur/details/

 

References:

For more information on President Jair Bolsonaro’s plans and the threats to the Amazon and Brazilian democracy, please see:

“As Bolsonaro Threatens to Criminalize Protests, a New Resistance Movement Is Emerging in Brazil,” Democracy Now! https://bit.ly/2StwIJR

“Stop biodiversity loss or we could face our own extinction, warns UN,” The Guardian, November 6, 2018: https://bit.ly/2AL4iVF

“Chickens, pigs and the Amazon tipping point,” Terrastendo, October 5, 2015: https://bit.ly/2QvjD1S

“Brazil's new foreign minister believes climate change is a Marxist plot,” The Guardian, November 15, 2018: https://bit.ly/2QilWJR