CPI of NGOs focuses on critics, Salles and Marina – 06/20/2023 – Environment

The CPI of NGOs has, among the 37 requests presented so far, invitations to authorities of the Lula (PT) and Jair Bolsonaro (PL) governments, including Marina Silva (Rede-SP) and Ricardo Salles (PL-SP), indigenous leaders and researchers, but almost none to non-governmental organizations themselves.

All proposals, so far, have been presented by the Senate committee rapporteur, Marcio Bittar (União-AC), or by the president, Plínio Valério (PSDB-AM), who says he wants all requests to be approved in session this Tuesday. -Friday (20).

Among the requests filed so far, none of them is to hear representatives of the main NGOs in the environmental sector, even those criticized by the members of the collegiate, such as ISA (Instituto Socioambiental) and Greenpeace.

On the other hand, there are a series of proposals to invite strong critics to the activities of non-profit organizations, including indigenous leaders.

There are also requests to hear former members of the Bolsonaro administration, such as Salles, who headed the Environment portfolio, former Ibama president Eduardo Bim and former Funai president Marcelo Xavier.

The trio was extremely criticized by entities, which claim that they were names that promoted an anti-environmental and anti-indigenous policy in the former administration.

The Bolsonaro administration changed the structure of the Executive to strengthen the Ministry of Agriculture and weaken the Ministry of the Environment.

At the same time, measures were taken —such as ordinances, opinions or bills— to, for example, weaken the inspection structure, facilitate the trade in illegal timber, make it difficult to demarcate indigenous lands and try to regularize mining within these territories, something that is currently prohibited.

There were also common complaints of harassment and persecution against employees of environmental agencies, including Bruno Pereira, an indigenist who was murdered in the Javari Valley in 2022, alongside the English journalist Dom Phillips.

It is on the list of requests to hear General Augusto Heleno, former minister of the GSI (Institutional Security Office).

From the current government, the commission wants to hear, in addition to the Minister of the Environment, Marina Silva, the president of Ibama, Rodrigo Agostinho, and the president of Funai, Joenia Wapichana.

Applications must be approved to collect information from the Federal Revenue Service and the BNDES on the financial transactions of NGOs and the Amazon Fund.

“It’s a strategy. We need to provoke first, wait for people to talk about the harm that NGOs cause. But with absolute certainty [representantes das entidades] will be called”, says the president of the CPI.

Plínio Valério is the author of invitations to indigenous leaders who, for example, “have been denouncing various entities, including NGOs”, as he states in one of the requests.

Requests were also made for researchers who work in the area to be heard, such as Lorenzo Carrasco, author of a book critical of non-governmental institutions in the sector and which, according to Márcio Bittar’s justification, shows “how these organizations act internally in countries to promote an agenda of external actors”.

The only organization with a request to be heard is FAS (Sustainable Amazon Foundation). Entities recognized in the field, such as Greenpeace, ISA or WWF, have not been mentioned so far.

The commission has a composition favorable to the opposition. The PT, for example, has only one senator in the group, Beto Faro (PT-PA). The opposition has the president and even members within the bloc theoretically allied with Lula, such as Senator Chico Rodrigues, who despite being from the PSB, was deputy leader of the Bolsonaro government.

The rapporteur himself, Marcio Bittar, despite being a member of the União Brasil —in theory, a grassroots party—, has already criticized the Lula government’s environmental policy this year.

“This happened because the government underestimated us, not appointing its members to the commission. When they showed up, on the eve of the installation, wanting the rapporteurship, it was too late. So we ended up with the majority”, says Valério.

Members of the Lula government, however, state, on condition of anonymity, that they are not concerned with the CPI, at least at first, and calculate that it should not cause wear and tear.

_{The Planeta em Transe project is supported by the Open Society Foundations.}