The writer is associate professor of international relations at the Getúlio Vargas Foundation in São Paulo
It is easy to forget that this year’s first major environmental disaster was not Covid-19 but Australian bush fires. That may have been in the back of Brazil’s environment minister Ricardo Salles’s mind recently. In April, he told a cabinet meeting that public distraction over the coronavirus pandemic was an opportunity to change “all the rules” governing the Amazon’s environmental protection.
Brasília may well hope that a similar dynamic plays out this September when Amazon fires usually peak, helping it to avoid global scrutiny of its controversial environmental policies. These dominated world headlines last year when Emmanuel Macron warned amid record fires that “our house is burning” in a tweet that sparked a bitter row between the French president and his Brazilian counterpart, Jair Bolsonaro.