Seven Ruralistas were given top positions in the powerful Parliamentary Farming Front FPA), including: then-president of the FPA, Tereza Cristina, as Minister of Agriculture; former FPA legal director Ricardo Salles, as Minister of the Environment; and rural caucus member Valdir Colatto, as Chief of Brazil’s Forest Service. By 2019, the FPA had 257 signatories (17 more than the previous year): 225 of the 513 deputies in the house, and 32 of the 81 seats in the senate.

President Bolsonaro moved to freeze the budget of the National Indian Foundation (FUNAI). In 2019, Mr Bolsonaro attempted (but ultimately failed) to move FUNAI from the Ministry of Justice to the Ministry of Agriculture, where critics said the agribusiness lobby would exert more influence.

President Bolsonaro obstructed Brazil’s system of environmental fines, one of the main instruments for punishing those who illegally deforest the Amazon. After attacking IBAMA for having created an ‘industry of fines’, the administration cut its budget and created procedures that would delay payment of fines by those found responsible for illegal deforestation—undermining the intended preventative effect of the fines and thereby offering the Ruralists a freehand.

In February 2019, 21 of the 27 Brazilian Institute of Environment and Renewable Natural Resources (IBAMA) superintendents were dismissed, undermining law enforcement to protect the amazon.

A presidential decree issued on 29 May 2019 restructured the National Environment Council (CONAMA) to weaken the protection of the Amazon at the policy level. CONAMA membership was reduced from 96 to 23, affecting the participation of states. Council members representing civil society were reduced to only four from a previous level of 22 seats.

The report Violence Against Indigenous Peoples in Brazil – 2019 data, published annually by the Missionary Council for Indigenous Peoples (CIMI ), reveals: “...the picture of an extremely perverse and worrying reality of the indigenous peoples in Brazil in the first year of Jair Bolsonaro as president of the country. The intensification of expropriations of indigenous lands, forged in the invasion, land grabbing, and subdivision of the lands, is quickly and aggressively being consolidated throughout the national territory, causing immeasurable destruction.”

In February 2020, President Bolsonaro sent a bill to Congress to open Indigenous territories to mining, dams, and other projects with heavy environmental impacts. The bill was still pending at the time of our filing. First drafted under prior administrations, Mr Bolsonaro has pushed for a bill which could significantly limit additional demarcation of Indigenous territory and threaten those already in place. It has been approved by large majorities in the house and is currently awaiting consideration in the Senate.

President Bolsonaro called NGOs working in the Amazon a “cancer” that he “can’t kill,” and accused them, without any proof, of being responsible for the destruction of the rainforest. He also blamed Indigenous people and small farmers for Amazon fires.

In December 2020, president Bolsonaro signed a bill on regularizing private occupation of public land. The proposed legislation appears designed in part to make illegally appropriated land the official property of occupiers. Criticized as the ‘Land-Grabbing Bill (PL da Grilagem), it introduces significant changes to existing land regularization legislation—for example, allowing public lands to be sold to third parties. The bill was still pending at the time of our filing.

In May 2019, funding allocated to the Ministry of the Environment was significantly cut. Programs adversely affected included those related to climate-change policies, forest fire prevention and control, federal environmental licensing activities, and conservation support.

In May 2020, the government transferred oversight of federal natural reserves from the Ministry of the Environment to the Ministry of Agriculture, paving the way for commercial development in protected areas.

In May 2021, Federal police raided the ministry of environment supposedly tasked with protecting the Brazilian environment and the environment minister Ricardo Salles’ home as part of an investigation into alleged illegal logging in the Amazon. Deforestation had risen sharply under his watch.

First drafted under prior administrations, Mr Bolsonaro has pushed for renewed passage of a proposal to loosen the rules for environmental licensing. It has been approved by large majorities in the House and is currently awaiting consideration in the Senate.