Jair Bolsonaro was elected on Sunday in Brazil and will become President on 1st January 2019.
Bolsonaro has been a member of the Christian Democratic party and the Social Christian Party, the latter of which he left in 2018 to pursue Presidential election with the Social Liberal Party.
Although his campaign coalition was called ‘God above all’ (Deus acima de todos), The Catholic Agency For Overseas Development (CAFOD) said Bolsonaro’s policies will persecute the social movements that protect environmental defenders.
Brazil programme officer for CAFOD, Esther Gillingham, wrote a letter in The Guardian, saying that the new President’s plan to ‘change the destiny’ of Brazil “looks set to abolish environmental protection and exacerbate the bloodshed linked to the unregulated exploitation of the Amazon”.
He has previously spoken out against lands reserved for indigenous tribes.
Gillingham explained: “Courageous indigenous and rural landless communities are being killed with little recourse to justice. Impunity and lack of rule of law have exacerbated this trend – of the 1,270 murder since 1985 linked to land conflict in Brazil, less than 10 per cent have ever reached court”.
She concluded: “Irreparable damage to the world’s largest rain forest threatens to irreversible accelerate climate chance for future generations.”
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