Lula Govt ‘s Laudable Initiative for Protecting Amazon amid Biggest-ever Eco- Offensive by Neofascist Regimes
P J James
As Brazil is scheduled to host COP30, the 2025 International Climate Meeting, its President Lula da Silva has come forward with a series of measures to protect Amazon, world’s biggest rainforest with many billions of carbon-absorbing trees and key buffer against global warming. As a prelude to the effort, a meeting of the 8-nation Amazon Cooperation Treaty Organization will be convened shortly.
After the 28- year old Organisation’s last meeting in 2009, on account of the political turmoil including the ascendancy of the far-right, corporate-fascist Jair Bolsonaro regime, no meeting of this important organisation was held, even as the entire Amazon was facing surging destruction. Now, after returning to power early this year, one of the crucial initiatives taken by Lula was to strengthen Amazon Cooperation Treaty Organization comprising Brazil, Bolivia, Colombia, Ecuador, Guyana, Peru, Suriname and Venezuela.
Under the previous neofascist regime whose motto was to fill the coffers of the most corrupt billionaire class by facilitating corporate-plunder of nature, Amazon-deforestation had reached catastrophic levels, directly contributing to unprecedented global warming and climate change. For instance, according to Brazil’s national space agency, carbon emissions from Amazon increased by 117% in 2020, compared to the annual average during 2010-18!
Revealingly, while Brazil is taking this laudable initiative, the neofascist Indian regime which has been a close ally of Brazil’s neofascist Bolsonaro regime till it’s rout, and acting as a corporate-facilitator, is engaged in an all-out offensive facilitating the plunder of India’s dwindling forests and fragile ecosystem. It’s latest manifestations are the Forest Conservation (Amendment) Act , 2023 and the Mines and Minerals (Development and Regulation) Amendment Bill, 2023. Both these legislations passed without even subjecting to proper scrutiny by parliamentary committees, have given unprecedented opportunities for the reactionary corporate sections who prop-up this regime, and in the process, wiping out the remaining ecosystem of India along with horrific displacement of forest-dwellers and tribal population.
Thus, as is obvious, not only from the perspective of the working class and all oppressed, but also for the survival of ecology and for a life that is in harmony with nature, there is no option other than to remove the neofascists from power at the earliest.
6th August 2023
