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Explain-
In a recent announcement, Brazilian Vice President Hamilton Mourão defended the creation of a new agency that would have full authority over Amazon deforestation and fire monitoring satellite alerts. For three decades, INPE, Brazil’s civilian space agency, has held that role, making data publicly available.
The VP claims INPE satellite monitoring is outdated and doesn’t see through clouds. Critics of the government note that the space institute’s Prodes and Deter systems continue to provide excellent data on Amazon fires and deforestation, usable for enforcement, while clouds matter little in the dry season when most fires occur.
Critics contend that multiple moves by the government to disempower INPE are likely ways of denying transparency, ending INPE’s civil authority, and placing deforestation and fire monitoring satellites under secretive military control.
So far, an effort to fund new military satellites has failed. Meanwhile, Norway has partnered with the companies Planet and Airbus to offer free satellite images for monitoring tropical forests including the Amazon. Such publicly available images from Planet, NASA and other sources could thwart Bolsonaro’s possible attempt at secrecy
If there ever was any doubt — after key firings this year and last year — as to whether the Jair Bolsonaro government aims to disempower and disassemble the National Institute for Space Research (INPE), there is now little uncertainty remaining. Recent actions show the administration’s firm intent to decouple the agency from its mission monitoring deforestation and fires in Brazil, carried out successfully for more than three decades.
Since Bolsonaro took office almost two years ago, the internationally renowned institute has suffered dismissals, high level defamations, unfounded criticisms, and interventions in its organizational structure (in violation of INPE’s own body of rules). In addition, the government has demonstrated its determination to transfer responsibility for deforestation and fire monitoring to Brazil’s military.
Last week, the government made its objective even clearer. In a live broadcast by the Institute for the Reform of the State and Corporate Relations (IREE), Brazilian Vice President Hamilton Mourão — who also heads Bolsonaro’s newly founded Amazon Council — defended the creation of a new agency that concentrates authority for Amazon monitoring systems and satellite alerts.
“Prodes and Deter [INPE’s deforestation monitoring satellite systems] are good systems, but they still have flaws,” explained General Mourão. But “We need to move towards an agency that has that capacity more consistently, and that gives us alerts… similar to the NRO [the U.S. National Reconnaissance Office]… which integrates all of those [satellite] systems and therefore with a lower cost and being more efficient.”
Linked to the U.S. Defense Department, the NRO is one of the largest military intelligence agencies in the United States; it operates the nation’s highly classified reconnaissance satellite network. Environmental monitoring in the U.S. is carried out by civil agencies.
Brazil’s shift in responsibility for deforestation and fire monitoring from a civil authority, where it has always rested, to the military would mark a seismic shift in the Latin American nation’s environmental regulation policies.
