SP climate secretary helped in Salles’ herd – 07/13/2023 – Environment

The Executive Secretary for Climate Change of the city of São Paulo, Antonio Fernando Pinheiro Pedro, was part of the transition team of the Jair Bolsonaro (PL) government and helped to develop the policy adopted by Ricardo Salles (PL-SP) at the head of the MMA (Ministry of the Environment).

Recent statements by the secretary of the capital of São Paulo on the climate crisis were considered denialist by specialists and opposition politicians.

In June, he said that the planet “save itself” from global warming and criticized the scientific consensus on the subject. On Wednesday (12), he reiterated the positions and discredited the work of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

In documents from the transition group of the Bolsonaro government, Pinheiro Pedro defends the dehydration of Conama (National Council for the Environment), one of the main advisory bodies for the area.

“Bloated and with a composition of a political nature, Conama ends up acting emotionally, without the proper technique, subjecting itself to interference of an ideological and corporatist nature that is little affected [sic] to State policy”, says the note.

In 2019, less than five months after taking office, a decree by Salles, who is now a federal deputy, reduced the number of members entitled to vote from 96 to 23 and reduced the participation of civil society. The measure was proposed in the transition.

“The path is to reposition Conama, altering its composition and structure, by decree. Conama’s plenary could be reduced to a small number of appointed counselors, appointed periodically by the Executive”, recommended Pinheiro Pedro in the text.

The tactic of loosening environmental policy through decrees was nicknamed “passing the cattle” when it was highlighted by Salles, at a ministerial meeting, in April 2020.

Sought by the report to comment on the criticisms of the policies suggested by him, Pinheiro Pedro said that what he thinks is “written, signed and published”.

Conama is responsible for drawing up public policies to be implemented by the ministry.

The council’s composition was modified in February of this year, when a decree by President Lula (PT) determined that the board would now be composed of 114 members. After civil society asked for parity and greater diversity of representatives, the current composition of the body must undergo a new reformulation.

In the note written during the transition of the federal government, Pinheiro Pedro also criticizes the composition of the technical staff at Ibama (Brazilian Institute for the Environment and Natural Resources), stating that the career of specialist in the environment had gained “ideological contours” and the presence of “professional activists”.

The lawyer adds that this “activism effect” would also occur in the Public Ministry. “The result can be seen in the impressive judicialization taking place in the environmental management space”, he writes.

During the Bolsonaro administration, a series of actions affected the legal progress of environmental inspection. An act by Salles, for example, instituted a process of “conciliation of fines” between offenders and Ibama. This took power away from inspectors and stopped the process of sanctioning environmental crimes. The rule was revoked by Minister Marina Silva.

Another measure was implemented by the then president of Ibama, Eduardo Bim. Last year, by order, he invalidated stages of environmental infringement processes and, in practice, caused them to prescribe a series of applied fines, reaching R$ 29.1 billion. In March, under Lula’s management, the order was annulled.

Bim was also part of the environment team in Bolsonaro’s transitional government, alongside Pinheiro Pedro e Salles.

Coordinated by agronomist Evaristo de Miranda, former president of Embrapa and Bolsonaro’s environmental guru, the group recommended other changes criticized by experts for weakening the Ministry of the Environment, such as the transfer of the Brazilian Forestry Service to the Ministry of Agriculture.

The Forest Service is responsible for implementing environmental policies and granting forest concessions. The body returned to the responsibility of the Environment in the Lula government.

“It doesn’t surprise me to see this kind of textbook denialism coming out of the mouth of someone who helped Ricardo Salles and Evaristo de Miranda destroy federal climate governance in Brazil during the transition of the Bolsonaro government,” says Claudio Angelo, communications coordinator and climate policy of the Climate Observatory, a network of more than 80 socio-environmental organizations.

“What amazes me is that the city hall of the largest city in the country gives shelter to this type of ideology”, he adds.

wanted by Sheetthe mayor of São Paulo, Ricardo Nunes (MDB), did not comment on the criticism of the secretary until the end of the report.

The transition team also came up with the idea of ​​merging Ibama and ICMBio (Chico Mendes Institute for Biodiversity Conservation).

ICMBio is the body responsible for managing conservation units across the country, while Ibama’s main attribution is environmental inspection. After criticism from specialists and resistance from the servers of both bodies, the merger did not happen.