Austria-based environmental non-profit AllRise files a complaint with ICC, accusing Brazil’s leader of “fuelling the mass destruction of the Amazon with his eyes wide open and in full knowledge of the consequences.”
Deforestation of the Brazilian Amazon has surged since Brazil’s
President Jair Bolsonaro took office and the losses amount to
a crime against humanity as climate change strengthens, an
environmental non-profit has charged.
Austria-based AllRise filed a complaint with the International Criminal Court (ICC) on Tuesday, accusing the far-right leader of “facilitating and accelerating” Amazon losses with policies that encourage deforestation, land grabbing, and illegal mining.
“Jair Bolsonaro is fuelling the mass destruction of the
Amazon with his eyes wide open and in full knowledge of the
consequences,” said the group’s founder Johannes Wesemann in a
statement.
Bolsonaro’s office did not reply to a request for comment.
Series of charges against Bolsonaro
The filing is just the latest in a series of charges made
against Bolsonaro at the ICC since he took power in 2019, though
it is the first to link Amazon destruction to climate crisis and
expected health impacts as a result of warming, AllRise said.
Other complaints criticised Bolsonaro for his handling of
the coronavirus pandemic in Brazil, where 600,000 have died, and
his policies affecting indigenous peoples.
The ICC could take years to decide if it will investigate
the new complaint, legal experts said.
Marcio Astrini, executive secretary of the Brazilian Climate
Observatory, which supported the filing, said the complaint is
unlikely to change how Bolsonaro governs but might help push
action by other key decision makers, from Brazil’s courts to
companies investing in the country.
It could also weaken Bolsonaro’s international standing
ahead of next month’s UN COP26 climate talks, where Brazil is
expected to try to show it can fight climate crisis while
remaining an expanding agricultural powerhouse, he said.
“It’s one more brick in the wall of shame he has been
building for Brazil,” Astrini said in a phone interview.
Precedent?
Maud Sarlieve, a human rights and international criminal
lawyer who helped compile the AllRise case, said the complaint
could test a key ICC statute to “see if it can cover deaths
linked to environmental destruction”.
The filing charges that planet-heating emissions caused by
swifter deforestation under Bolsonaro’s administration could
cause more than 180,000 extra heat-related deaths globally by
the turn of the century.
If the ICC accepts the case, the move could help deter other
heads of state from enacting similarly environmentally
destructive policies, Sarlieve told the Thomson Reuters
Foundation in a phone interview.
If it rejects the complaint, “then we can use it to
demonstrate that the law is not (fit for purpose),” said.
And if the law doesn’t work in “an extreme situation like
the one in Brazil, then it needs to be changed,” she added.
During a speech at the United Nation’s General Assembly in
September, Bolsonaro said his government was committed to
protecting the environment.
But rates of deforestation are nearly double what they were
in January to August 2018, according to government data.
Source: Reuters
Brazil’s Bolsonaro accused of stoking ‘mass destruction’ of Amazon
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