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by uxcolumbo 2495 days ago
What do you think can be done to accelerate this? Is there anything we in the West can do?

I've seen some petitions targeted at the Brazilian embassy here in my country - but not sure of its effectiveness, as it seems Bolsonaro doesn't really care what the West think.

1 comments

Brazilian here. Meddling with politics could backfire hard, being wrapped around the flag with foreigners booing him could actually bounce back his popularity.

As for something the west could do, I'm not an expert, but I think offering to foot the bill for police and inspectors in the area would go a long way.

Most logging and burning in the Amazon is still illegal, but it's very hard to police a huge sparsely populated area[1], and our government is dysfunctional even when it tries. The average Brazilian has little to no sympathy for the criminals, but is ambivalent about paying more for police in the jungle far away. It would be a lot easier to argue for more officers if someone else was footing their salaries.

[1]The rogue logger only needs to win in a small area, any small area would do. The state needs to win everywhere.

There already was a international fund for paying for inspections and so on, but it was canceled after Bolsonaro said they were using that money to compensate farmers.