Teenage climate activist Greta Thunberg is likely crying more angrily in the wake of this week’s speech by Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro. Thunberg gave a tearful statement at the Climate Action Summit a day before the UN General Assembly (UNGA) opening session. She condemned world leaders for failing to take strong measures to combat climate change with a sharp, emotional, “How dare you.”

As is tradition, the next day, Brazil’s president gave the opening speech to the UNGA. Immediately, Bolsonaro, in a fierce speech, blamed the international media and environmental organizations for spreading “lies” about the fires that are ravaging the Amazon rainforest. Bolsonaro said the Amazon “remains pristine and virtually untouched,” claiming this was evidence that Brazil is “one of the countries that protects its environment the most.” Quite the contrast.

Climate change in Latin America, specifically Brazil with its wildfires burning out of control in the country’s Amazon, is drawing global attention. Earlier this year, Brazil shut down programs dedicated to defending the Amazon rainforest from deforestation for budgetary and political reasons. In response, Norway and Germany, the two largest contributors to the billion-dollar Amazon Fund, froze tens of millions of dollars of funding. This contention fed into Brazil’s president giving a fiery, nationalistic speech regarding the country’s sovereignty in the face of global organizations because of the Amazon’s fires.

Bolsonaro’s nationalistic tone is backed up with comments such as: “The Amazon is not being devastated.” To be sure, he faces protests from Brazilian environmental groups, activists and indigenous tribal leaders, who have warned that his policies threaten both the Amazon and the indigenous peoples who live there. On the domestic front, the indigenous peoples issue drives much of the furor toward Bolsonaro. The president argues that radical environmentalists are exploiting “the indigenous policy agenda to further the economic interests of foreign countries.”

Brazil has claimed that the Amazon’s environmental relevance is inflated and that the rainforest is not global property.

Dr. Theodore Karasik

In his UNGA speech, Bolsonaro warned that the UN should not become “a globalist organization.” He praised US President Donald Trump, with whom he has formed a strong alliance against climate change, calling it a “globalist” conspiracy.

When Bolsonaro finished his UNGA speech, Trump immediately followed. The US president also spoke out against “globalists” at the world’s largest annual gathering of international leaders. Trump, too, attacked the media and academia for waging a supposed “all-out assault” on “free society.” The totality of these statements and their significance regarding sovereignty plays to the emergence of powerful anti-global forces.

Anti-globalist Brazilian Foreign Minister Ernesto Araujo is credited with most of the government’s policy development, including issues over sovereignty. Araujo’s influence on Bolsonaro is impressive, in that both have claimed that the Amazon’s environmental relevance is inflated and that the rainforest is not global property.

This anti-globalist outlook is boosting nationalistic tendencies that are affecting Brazil’s view of the world. Bolsonaro argues that “it is a fallacy to say that the Amazon is a heritage of humankind, and it is a misconception, as scientists claim, to say that our forest is the lungs of the world.” This understanding of the Amazon as sovereign to Brazil brings a new twist to climate change and global responsibility.

The Brazilian president saved some of his most scathing comments against interference in the country’s sovereignty for French President Emmanuel Macron. Some nations, such as France, have suggested that Brazil should face economic consequences for failing to act to curb the fires. But Bolsonaro said that such countries, instead of helping Brazil, had “followed the lies of the media and behaved disrespectfully, with a colonialist spirit,” in specific reference to Paris. He went on: “They have questioned what is most sacred to us — our sovereignty… One of them, at the last G7 meeting, dared to suggest imposing sanctions against Brazil without even listening to us. I am grateful to those who have not accepted to carry out this absurd proposal.” This type of language — of accusing Macron of having a “colonialist mindset” — illustrates the divisions that separate countries on climate change.

Overall, Bolsonaro used the UNGA to project his view that he rejects climate change and outside opinions of the country’s internal matters, especially when discussing Amazon fires and the rainforest’s destruction. Brazil is using the idea of sovereignty as a tool against some UN member states to prevent interference in the country’s affairs, but is also using the fires as a political tool to gain leverage and capital. Some of you may cry now.

  • Dr. Theodore Karasik is a senior adviser to Gulf State Analytics in Washington, D.C. He is a former RAND Corporation Senior Political Scientist who lived in the UAE for 10 years, focusing on security issues. Twitter: @tkarasik