Misgovernment deepens degradation in Brazil

Sergio U. Dani * and Paulo M. Serrano Neves § 

Amidst what may be the largest corruption case in modern history [1] coupled with huge public and private debts, chronic unemployment, violence and increasing socioenvironmental degradation, a fistful of Brazilian lobbyists and their hired politicians are doing more of what they know best: looting of public and natural resources. 

President Temer’s decree nº 9.142 of 22nd August 2017 and its modifications abolished a protected area known as the National Reserve of Copper and Associates (RENCA) covering 46,000 sq km of the Amazon rainforest between the northern states of Pará and Amapá.

This territory is larger than Denmark and it had been protected by the military since 1984 because of its natural richness including sizeable reserves of gold, copper, and other minerals. The area also contains nine nature conservation units including two indigenous land areas. According to a WWF report, the main area of interest for copper and gold exploitation is in one of the protected areas, the Biological Reserve of Maicuru. 

Months before the decree was announced to the astonished Brazilian people, members of the Brazilian government informed Canadian mining companies, in Canada, of the plan to issue the decree. The unofficial cooperation between some Brazilian officials and Canadian mining companies is not new [2], and a known issue is the hiring of former Minas Gerais state secretary Wilson Nelio Brumer by Canadian Kinross Gold corporation to facilitate its business [3]. Kinross open cut gold mining in the city of Paracatu is responsible for the perhaps largest environmental degradation and widespread chronic arsenic intoxication in Brazil [4,5].

The deceptive artifice of Temer’s decree consists in affirming that the mining activity will take care of the "application of specific legislation on protection of the native vegetation, units of conservation of the nature, indigenous lands and areas in the buffer zones".

The government believes that the Brazilian people - who were made illiterate by the educational system - have reached such a state of imbecility that they do not know the history of Brazil enough to know that nowhere in Brazil does any large mining company protect any minimum environmental or human interest, as demonstrated by the situation of the Iron Quadrangle in Minas Gerais that broke out in the giant catastrophe of Mariana and, in the same state, the city of Paracatu, seen from space having its urban area being swallowed by open pit mining with arsenic dust escape.

Environmental systems suffer from pressures coming from the externality, be they peripheral or border pressures, pressures from changing overlying climate, particulate or solute emissions, traffic of people and vehicles, or from other anthropic facilities and activities.

The scenario of interactions proper to an environmental system requires removal of any alien interaction and more so when interactions receive legal protection.

The Presidency of the Republic threatens to explode the Art. 225 of the Brazilian Constitution - "Everyone has the right to an ecologically balanced environment, a common use of the people and essential to a healthy quality of life, imposing itself on the Public Power And to the collective the duty to defend and preserve it for present and future generations " - and on the ruins to build the economic recovery with the same hands that ruined the economy.

Wanting to make people believe that an activity that loots the nature and degrades the environment, such as mining, has the vocation to become protective is to want to make believe that this act of misgovernment is an act of government.

Temerary Temer’s misgovernment decrees have elicited national and international outcry and it is hoped that they will be reversed by their opponents.

_____________________
* MD, DSc, President of the MIMER-Medawar Institute for Medical and Environmental Research, Paracatu, MG, Brazil. Email: sergio.dani@hin.ch
§ Constitutional Lawyer and former Criminal Prosecutor of the State of Goiás, Brazil. Email: serrano@serrano.neves.nom.br

References:

[1] Padgett T. 2017. Brazil’s Car Wash scandal reveals a country soaked in corruption. What may be the largest corruption case in modern history runs deep in Latin America’s largest country. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-05-25/brazil-s-car-wash-scandal-reveals-a-country-soaked-in-corruption [accessed 27 August 2017]

[2] Lukacs M, Groves T. 2013. Canadian spies met with energy firms, documents reveal. Government agency that allegedly spied on Brazil had secret meetings with energy companies. The Guardian, Wednesday 9 October, 2013. https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2013/oct/09/canadian-spies-met-energy-firms-documents [accessed 27 August 2017].

[3] Dani SU. 2009. Canadian Kinross Gold Corporation operates corruption plots and a true genocide in Brazil. http://sosarsenic.blogspot.ch/2009/11/canadian-kinross-gold-corporation.html [accessed 27 August 2017].

As confissões

Por Solano Neiva, publicado no Facebook em 14.05.2017

Sem querer me deixar levar pelas edições dos grandes veículos de comunicação, tive a paciência de assistir grande parte dos trechos gravados e liberados pelo STF das confissões de João Santana e Monica Moura. São depoimentos duros, detalhados, esmiuçados, revelam toda a engrenagem das campanhas e a intimidade do casal com os dois presidentes que elegeram. 

Nos depoimentos salta a figura de Monica Moura como uma operadora destemida, capaz de trafegar pela violenta cidade de São Paulo de taxi a luz do dia com pacotes de 200/300 mil reais, sem nenhuma cobertura, por anos a fio. Que resolvia detalhes da vida pessoal da Presidenta e fazia a coisa toda funcionar, uma verdadeira máquina de conexão do dinheiro quente, frio, Brasil, Suíça, Odebrecht, Partidos, Ministros e Candidatos. Um centro nervoso do sistema, uma personagem digna de Dostóievski. 

João Santana emerge das sombras com um poder de influência de Primeiro Ministro ao lado dos Presidentes, com quem mantinha um relacionamento tão estreito, que às vezes dá a impressão de estarmos ouvindo a confissão de um coaching ou um psicólogo, para não dizer do Psiquiatra de Loucos e do mandatário de fato. Um grão-vizir do Imperador.

Neste longo capítulo de loucuras e desatinos revelados pela Operação Lavajato, os dois personagens que foram figuras decisivas de 3 eleições presidenciais no Brasil, que colaboraram no sentido de planejar ações do governo, escreveram discursos e mantiveram os dois presidentes sob estrito relacionamento confidencial, se tornaram no meu modesto entendimento, para sempre protagonistas de nossa história política do século XXI. 

A figura do marketeiro político assume aqui uma dimensão sem precedentes, e ao lado de Marcelo Odebrecht e outros, foram de fato "os donos do poder" numa das maiores economias e democracia do mundo - o Brasil. Deles serão escritos livros, farão filmes e séries e escreverão teses, pois os crimes caso comprovados, foram de proporções que ultrapassam qualquer parâmetro histórico já visto em qualquer país em tempos de paz e funcionando no Estado Democrático de Direito.

O genial Machiavel é um mero conselheiro e grande escritor comparado a isto. Um observador e intérprete atento e talentoso da história. Aqui neste caso assistimos de fato nas gravações, os que fizeram a história, que transformaram uma mulher despreparada e sem talento em presidente 2 vezes e antes disso reelegeram um presidente mergulhado num escândalo sem precedentes - infelizmente a nossa história recente do Brasil. Estamos pagando o preço com muito sofrimento.