Both Bolsonaro and the Brazilian environment Minister Salles show strong support for loggers, even when the loggers are working illegally on (still) protected land. The Brazilian Institute for the Environment (IBAMA) does try to monitor and prevent illegal logging, but is limited in its ability to do so because of the threat of violence from loggers.
Unfortunately, IBAMA seems to receive little support from politicians - for instance, after loggers burned an IBAMA full tanker used to fuel helicopters that it was using to monitor illegal logging activities, Salles gave a speech to the loggers that seemed to generally support them more than his own department:
...there is a law that must be respected while it is still a law. On the other hand, there is the need for the products provided by the loggers...
IBAMA looks to have a very uncertain future, but it does sound like their capabilities to monitor logging activity are quite limited at the moment (and I’m not sure what enforcement options they have).
A tractable intervention could be to provide more modern and scalable remote monitoring capabilities (UAVS/drones or even satellite imagery) and the skills to analyse data from them. I don’t know if IBAMA could receive such equipment directly as donations, or if the monitoring would be better done by a NGO that could then openly publish its results.
Both Bolsonaro and the Brazilian environment Minister Salles show strong support for loggers, even when the loggers are working illegally on (still) protected land. The Brazilian Institute for the Environment (IBAMA) does try to monitor and prevent illegal logging, but is limited in its ability to do so because of the threat of violence from loggers.
Unfortunately, IBAMA seems to receive little support from politicians - for instance, after loggers burned an IBAMA full tanker used to fuel helicopters that it was using to monitor illegal logging activities, Salles gave a speech to the loggers that seemed to generally support them more than his own department:
(paywalled source and pdf copy—in Portuguese, and google translate doesn’t do a great job)
IBAMA looks to have a very uncertain future, but it does sound like their capabilities to monitor logging activity are quite limited at the moment (and I’m not sure what enforcement options they have).
A tractable intervention could be to provide more modern and scalable remote monitoring capabilities (UAVS/drones or even satellite imagery) and the skills to analyse data from them. I don’t know if IBAMA could receive such equipment directly as donations, or if the monitoring would be better done by a NGO that could then openly publish its results.