Last week, Brazil’s embattled environment minister, Ricardo Salles, resigned after presiding over the country’s rising deforestation for almost two and a half years. Under his watch, more than 4,250 square miles of the Amazon were destroyed by largely human-made fires in 2020—an almost 50 percent increase from losses sustained in 2018. These fires, ignited by farmers and cattle ranchers during the Amazon’s annual burning season, were initially set on deforested land but spread like wildfire into the rainforest.
But Salles’s departure should not be seen as a harbinger of any major policy changes. Deforestation has also been facilitated by Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro, who transferred the certification of Indigenous territories to the ministry of agriculture, thus giving farming and pastoral interests a greater say over protected lands.
