In the first four months of the government of Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, the Brazilian Institute of the Environment (Ibama) has increased the number of sanctions against environmental infractions by almost 90 percent over the same period last year of Jair Bolsonaro.
In total, in these first little more than five months, Ibama has imposed 6,140 infractions on individuals and legal entities, which have resulted in a total of 1,591 million reais in fines (297 million euros). This is almost 90 percent more than the previous year, when about 3,950 sanctions were issued, which amounted to 838 million reais (156 million euros).
In the same period of time as years ago, the figures have continued to be much lower than those of these first four months of the administration of the Lula government. In 2021, fines amounting to 550 million reais (103 million euros) were imposed and in 2019, 924 million reais (172 million euros).
The largest sanction of this 2023 is one of 15.5 million reais (2.8 million euros) imposed on the railway company Rumo Malha Oest, of the Cosa group, owned by businessman Rubens Ometto, one of the most important financiers of electoral campaigns in 2022, details the newspaper ‘O Globo’.
The logging of the Brazilian Amazon reached its highest levels in the last fifteen years in the administration of a Bolsonaro, who was accused of collusion with the large ranchers and farmers responsible for this deforestation.
In his first three years in office, some 34,000 square kilometers of jungle were deforested. That provoked a unanimous condemnation by the international community, which chose to suspend the financing of the Amazon Fund, a mechanism financed especially by Norway and Germany.
Coinciding with the arrival of Lula da Silva, Norway reported that this fund was back in operation, which will now also have funding from the United Kingdom, as its Prime Minister, Rishi Sunak, informed the Brazilian President during his visit to London to attend the coronation of Carlos III.