The organization Human Rights Watch urged the President elect of Brazil, Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, to “commit to concrete measures to back up their promises on the environment as government representatives meet for the COP27 climate summit in Egypt.”
COP27 is the 27th annual UN climate change conference that takes place from November 6 to 18 in Sharm El-Sheikh. Da Silva, widely known as Lula, and current Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro are expected to attend the meeting.
“As COP27 begins a week after his election, Lula must specify how he plans to defend the rule of law in the Amazon and protect both the forest and its defenders as soon as he takes office,” said the director of Human Rights Watch Brazil. , Maria Laura Canineu in a statement published on Friday.
According to the human rights organization, in 2003, when Da Silva first took office, he inherited one of the highest recorded rates of deforestation in the Amazon, but that rate dropped by 67% by the end of his second term. in 2010.
Compared, Human Rights Watch asserted: “Under Bolsonaro, deforestation in the Amazon increased 73% in 2021 compared to 2018, its highest level in 15 years. Some 34,000 square kilometers of Amazon rainforest were cut down between 2019 and 2021, according to official data. Almost 99 percent of the deforestation recorded in 2021 had some irregularity that indicates illegality.
Human Rights Watch stated that Lula’s transition team “should prepare a strategy to reverse the rampant environmental destruction that has taken place under the Bolsonaro presidency.”
Canineu urged the outside world to closely monitor “the situation in the Amazon and support efforts to combat deforestation and protect forest defenders.”
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