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mundaniacal t1_j81rqoe wrote

My hot take:

So, this news is overhyped, possibly because it is politically expedient for the US to see Lula as a transformative leftist worth investing in.

From the article:

"It is positive to see such a relevant drop in January," WWF-Brasil conservation specialist Daniel Silva said. "However, it is still too early to talk about a trend reversal, as part of this drop may be related to January cloud cover."

He noted the January data represented the first drop from a year earlier in five months.

The fresh figures come after Reuters reported exclusively on Thursday that the United States was considering its first contribution to a multilateral fund aimed at fighting Amazon deforestation, with a possible announcement during President Joe Biden's meeting with Lula at the White House on Friday.

Edit: didn't realize this was r/upliftingnews , thought this was . . . a different news subreddit with an amusing name. Sorry for making a bummer comment.

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akeean t1_j82mbi7 wrote

Well, there have been quite a few reports in the past weeks the police and military was finally being activated in Brazil and send out against illegal mining barges and equipment being destroyed & ~20.000 "garimperos" -- illegal prospectors (that tend to set fires and murder indigeous people, activists, reporters, local politicians against mining or goverment officials in conservation jobs) being arrested or driven out of the region.

Those guys had grown to milita forces in the past years, going so far to assaulting whole villages and police outpost. Lots of activists were assasinated in the past years.

The previous government basically turned a blind eye to all of it and some people in there had been previously investigated for illegal trade and export of protected wood.

The Amazon is really far out from most of the population centers and some regions take several days to reach, so it was quite a mobilization effort.

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garlicroastedpotato t1_j820ebo wrote

Yes it's this subreddit, so your post will probably be deleted. The fact is the measure he announced hasn't been put in place yet. Deforestation could have slowed because illegal foresting operations might not be willing to risk coming into conflict with the Brazilian government. It could be that legal forest clearing is worried that their operations might become illegal and have been doing layoffs. It could be that there's a labor shortage and so it has become harder to hire people for logging.

But it's certainly not anything Lula did. It's kind of like how Donald Trump had a roaring stock market in his first month in office. It's politically useful to claim it as a win. But it's a win for the nation... not an individual.

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SyntheticSlime t1_j825feb wrote

It can also be people reading the winds. The argument for crediting Trump with the stock market is that it’s based on expectations. Similarly, maybe knowing there’s a new boss in charge caused some illegal forest clearing to stop. Loggers might have been more confident under Bolsonaro because they thought they’d be less likely to be prosecuted. It’s all pretty nebulous. There are so many factors at play at any given time it’s really hard to know how import any one thing is.

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Nemesysbr t1_j848svd wrote

Encampments of illegal miners and loggers are being dismounted right this moment. You can find videos on brazilian media of them escaping by the hundreds on boat, as well as news of the government putting more state presence on the amazon.

These news are perfectly compatible of what is happening on the ground since Lula took office the very same month.

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