Climate Crisis

Bolsonaro should be investigated by International Criminal Court for crimes against humanity and nature

The Amazon is in a perilous state and a net source of carbon emissions

Under Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro an area larger than Belgium has been deforested since 2019. File photograph: New York Times

Sadhbh O'Neill
Thu Oct 27 2022 - 06:00

In a few days, voters in Brazil will head back to the polls to elect a new president. Many commentators have warned that the fate of the Amazon rainforest hangs on the outcome. Lula da Silva has promised to reverse the policies of President Jair Bolsonaro permitting widespread land-grabbing, illegal deforestation and mining. However, Bolsonaro claimed last month at the UN General Assembly that “with regard to the environment and sustainable development, Brazil is part of the solution and a reference to the world”.

He brazenly claimed to his sceptical audience at the UN 80 per cent of the Amazon is still “intact”, despite mounting scientific evidence that due to deforestation, forest fires and climate change, the Amazon is now in a perilous state and a net source of carbon emissions.

Other research has warned that the Amazon is rapidly approaching a “tipping point” that could mean large areas transformed into savannah or dry, treeless and degraded landscapes, with devastating implications for the climate, communities and millions of species that rely on healthy forest ecosystems.

Bolsonaro’s address acknowledged the dependence of 20 million Brazilian inhabitants including Indigenous people “whose livelihood depends on some economic use of the forest”. What he didn’t say in his speech, however, is that the dismantling of forest protections and repeated amnesties covering illegal logging have encouraged the destruction of more than 13,000sq km of forest in 2021 alone, an increase of 22 per cent above 2020 levels, along with an explosion of illegal mining and conflicts in Indigenous lands. Under Bolsonaro, an area larger than Belgium has been deforested since 2019. According to one estimate, the number of murders of Indigenous people grew by 61 per cent in 2021.

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Beef and soya production are among the leading causes of forest loss in Brazil

The Brazilian election may indeed decide the fate of the Amazon, and by extension, the world. What is not mentioned though is the effort by Brazilian environmental and Indigenous organisations to hold Bolsonaro to account for his criminal policies of murder and environmental destruction. Beef and soya production are among the leading causes of forest loss in Brazil. Environmental organisations have documented a litany of crimes including corruption and illegal sales of timber by leading politicians, including Brazil’s minister for the environment Ricardo Salles.

Salles was eventually sacked in June this year, just a day after Bolsonaro praised him for having promoted “an almost perfect marriage” between agriculture and the environment. Since taking office, Bolsonaro surrounded himself with a team referred to as the BBB caucus (Bíblia, Boi e Bala, meaning bible, beef and bullets), a combination of evangelicals, rich property owners, cattle and meat industry representatives and former members of the security forces.

However, the western media frames the issue of forest loss in self-interested terms: we implore Brazil to not destroy the Amazon for our sake and for the sake of the global environment, instead of viewing the actions of the Bolsonaro government as human rights violations against Indigenous peoples and humanity.

Forest residents who denounce illegal activities or attempt to enforce environmental laws (that is environmental defenders) are being killed every other day. When they are not murdered, they suffer death threats and other forms of violence. Instead of passively counting the cost of ecological devastation, we should be supporting the calls by Brazilian NGOs and Indigenous representatives to bring Bolsonaro to justice at the International Criminal Court (ICC).

The International Criminal Court can investigate, prosecute and jail individuals for their crimes

Crimes against people and nature on the scale of Bolsonaro’s are crimes against humanity. There is a growing movement in support of adding the crime of ecocide to the Statute of Rome, which outlawed crimes against humanity and set up the ICC. Legal experts have argued the statute now needs to be amended to include the crime of ecocide. The recommended definition of ecocide is “unlawful or wanton acts committed with knowledge that there is a substantial likelihood of severe and either widespread or long-term damage to the environment being caused by those acts”.

On October 12th, 2021, the NGO All Rise filed a communication to the Office of the Prosecutor of the ICC requesting an investigation into Bolsonaro for his role in crimes against humanity resulting from ongoing deforestation and related activities in the Amazon rainforest. The UN Security Council, of which Ireland is a member, can also refer cases to the ICC, as has happened in the cases of Libya and Darfur (Sudan).

Unlike the International Court of Justice which deals with disputes between countries, the ICC can investigate, prosecute and jail individuals for their crimes. Only by developing and utilising these legal instruments to hold ecocidal criminals to account before the world, can we hope to deter others from doing likewise.

  • Sadhbh O’ Neill is a lecturer and researcher in climate policy and politics
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