RIO DE JANEIRO -- Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro defended his administration's record protecting the Amazon rain forest, telling the United Nations' virtual meeting of global leaders on Tuesday that his country has been wrongly portrayed as an environmental villain.
As the first speaker in the U.N. General Assembly's general debate, in keeping with tradition for the Brazilian leader, Bolsonaro said the South American nation's agribusiness sector has succeeded in boosting agricultural exports to feed a growing global population, which has made it a target.
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"We are victims of one of the most brutal disinformation campaigns about the Amazon and the Pantanal wetlands," Bolsonaro said. "The Brazilian Amazon is well known to be very rich. That explains why international institutions support such campaigns based on ulterior interests, joined by self-serving and unpatriotic Brazilian associations, with the objective of harming the government and Brazil itself."
Last week, a group of European countries -- the Amsterdam Declarations Partnership, led by Germany -- published a joint statement urging Brazil to take action in the Amazon. They said deforestation is making it "increasingly difficult" for businesses and investors in Brazil to fulfill their environmental, social and governance criteria.
"He [Bolsonaro] claimed that they were leading a campaign to discredit his government, yet it is his administration that has systematically eroded environmental legislation and not enforced penalties for environmental crime," said Robert Muggah, co-founder of Igarape Institute, a Rio de Janeiro-based think tank focused on public, digital and environmental security.
"Under his watch, illegal land clearances, illicit deforestation, and wildcat mining have soared," Muggah said.
Bolsonaro came to office in 2019 promising to open more of the Amazon to development such as farming and mining. International concern, particularly after last year's fires, has led investors to distance themselves from rising deforestation and pressure Bolsonaro's government to take more action.
In Bolsonaro's debut appearance at the assembly in 2019, he struck a defiant tone, railing against the media and socialism. He declared Brazilian sovereignty over the Amazon and denounced what he termed "radical environmentalism."
"It is the same as last year: a mix of denial of reality and self-praise for promoting an environmental policy that does not exist," said Rubens Ricupero, a Brazilian who was secretary-general of the U.N. Conference on Trade and Development for nearly a decade.
In May, Bolsonaro put the army in charge of protecting the rain forest. Two months later, he banned setting agricultural and forest fires for 120 days as the country entered the dry season.
Deforestation in Brazil's Amazon region may have reached a 14-year high in the 12 months through July, according to preliminary data published last month by the country's space agency. Final data will be released in coming months.
