Today Brazil’s Trumpian president, Jair Bolsonaro, suggested that the massive outbreak of fires in the Amazon rainforest were being cause by NGO to embarrass his administration. Sounds like he and Trump are using the same playbook. The cause of the fires is the agricultural land rush that Bolsonaro has allowed to take place. At the same time more land is coming under cultivation, the foundations of any agricultural future are crumbling. Case in point, pollinators.
Pointing to the deaths of more than half a billion bees in Brazil over a period of just four months, beekeepers, experts and activists are raising concerns about the soaring number of new pesticides greenlighted for use by the Brazilian government since far-right President Jair Bolsonaro took office in January — and the threat that it poses to pollinators, people and the planet.
Indigenous and green groups have expressed alarm about the dangers of Bolsonaro's anti-environment policies — especially for the Amazon rainforest — since even before Bolsonaro's inauguration. Recent reports highlighting that the Bolsonaro government has approved a record 290 pesticides so far this year have further heightened worries about his environmental agenda and its consequences.
"Between December 2018 and March 2019, more than 500 million bees were found dead by beekeepers in four Brazilian states," SciDev.net reported Friday, citing figures revealed earlier this year. "Beekeepers' associations and agriculture authorities suspect this was caused by the widespread use of two classes of pesticides — fipronil and neonicotinoids — on flowering crops."
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