Jair Bolsonaro alarms climate activists at Davos 2019

Yesterday, President Jair Bolsonaro took centre stage at the World Economic Forum, delivering a pro-business speech appealing to big business. Bolsonero told CEOs in Davos that his government would make the country one of the top 50 in which to do business. Bolsonaro said he would work to open up Brazil’s closed economy, reduce taxes, privatise state companies and give his new justice minister the tools to tackle corruption.

“It is now our mission to make progress in harmonising environmental preservation and biodiversity with the much-needed economic development,” says Bolsonaro, “No other country in the world has as many forests as we do”. José Gregorio Mirabal, the general coordinator of Coordinator of Indigenous Organizations of the Amazon River Basin (COICA) warns that “the world’s economic and political elite in Davos today should not be distracted… Bolsonaro’s attack on the peoples and forests of his country threatens all the peoples and forests of the Amazon, and puts at risk global efforts to address climate change.”

Since he took office on 1 January, Brazil’s new president, has dismantled several government divisions dedicated to climate change. Also, backing out of Brazil’s offer to host the 25th Conference of the Parties, the United Nation’s 2019 climate change conference. (1)

His government appears to have dropped plans to exit the Paris Agreement on climate change, but environmentalists worry his policies will favour farming interests and speed up deforestation in the Amazon. (2)