The Amazon may be the focus of an international conflict as a result of the environmental policy of the Bolsonaro government of Brazil that threatens to destroy the Amazon rainforest and, as a consequence, affect indigenous populations living there. International military intervention can take place to ensure the existence of the forest as an important means of combating climate change and to prevent genocide against indigenous populations.

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AMAZON CAN BECOME FUTURE FOCUS OF INTERNATIONAL
CONFLICT
Fernando Alcoforado*
If nothing changes, the United States will finally have what it has always wanted: the
conquest of the Amazon. President Bolsonaro recently announced that he intends to
hand over to Americans the exploitation of the riches of this vast region, whose
deforestation has already reached alarming levels after his inauguration. Not only
Brazilians, but the whole world does not hide their concern about Bolsonaro's
environmental policy which, without a scientific basis, disputes the deforestation figures
of the National Institute for Space Research (INPE), which reveal an accelerated
process of destruction. from the Amazon rainforest. The situation is very serious
because the Amazon rainforest, according to scientists, is responsible for the greater
absorption of carbon dioxide and thus plays a key role in combating the catastrophic
climate change expected in the 21st century.
Pope Francis said world leaders must save the Amazon, where many interests are at
stake, according to an interview published by the Italian newspaper La Stampa. The
Amazon, which spans nine South American countries, "is a representative and decisive
place," the pope said. "Along with the oceans, it contributes decisively to the survival of
the planet," recalled the high pontiff, who convened a synod of bishops on this topic at
the Vatican in October. Francisco denounced in the interview the real obstacles that
prevent the safeguarding of this huge territory threatened by deforestation, agribusiness
and the timber industry. "The threat to the lives of populations and territory derives
from the economic and political interests of the dominant sectors of society," he said.
The Vatican meeting is like "a son of Laudato si '," the Pope said, referring to one of his
first encyclicals on nature protection. "It's not a green encyclical, it's a social encyclical,
based on a 'green' reality, the custody of Creation," he added. During the interview, the
pope invited political leaders to eliminate "their own connivance and corruptions" to
focus on these topics. For the Pope, "deforestation means killing humanity," he added.
The threat to the Amazon rainforest has led Harvard University researcher Stephen M.
Walt, in an article in the US magazine Foreign Policy, to consider the possibility of
international military intervention to save the Amazon from Bolsonaro's destroying
scourge. For Walt, it is a matter of time before world leaders do “whatever it takes” to
stem the devastating fury of the Amazon, encouraged by Bolsonaro. Although
deforestation was accelerated after Bolsonaro's government beginning, as evidenced by
INPE, the fact that is that the American researcher's warning not only reflects a concern
with the region, but also represents a threat of internationalization of the Amazon. This
means that Bolsonaro would be contributing not only to the transfer of this immense
patrimony of the Brazilian people to the United States, but also to an international
military intervention in the region.
The cover of British magazine The Economist featured the Amazon with chainsaw-
devastated trees, titled Deathwatch for the Amazon. This magazine states that South
America's natural wonder may be dangerously close to the tipping point beyond which
its gradual transformation into something closer to the steppe may not be prevented or
reversed because Brazil's president, Jair Bolsonaro, is hastening the ecological collapse
that his environmental policies can precipitate and that needs to be avoided. Existing
environmental protection laws of the Amazon are being eliminated and the forest is

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under threat under the Bolsonaro government. The reactive attitude of the Bolsonaro
government against the protection of the Amazon rainforest is putting the following
issue on the agenda, according to The Economist magazine: What should the
international community do to prevent or reverse actions harmful to the global
environment by the Bolsonaro government from Brazil?
One of the measures that could be taken to pressure environmentally irresponsible
countries like Bolsonaro's Brazil would be the use of military force by the United
Nations Security Council. Brazil becomes a target for this intervention because the
country has possession of a resource, the Amazon rainforest, whose destruction would
damage the entire globe. The author of The Economist's article emphasizes that it is not
intended to stimulate such actions, which may seem exaggerated in the current context,
but makes it clear that as climate events worsen, more energetic (not are necessarily
dependent on the use of force) are taken by political leaders against countries whose
actions imply environmental damage in order to curb climate change.
Besides deforestation, another justification of international military intervention, under
the pretext of defending human rights, would be the threat to the existence of
indigenous peoples living in the Amazon resulting from the destruction of the forest.
The Crime of Genocide is defined in Article 6 of the Rome Statute which reflects the
definition contained in the 1948 Convention for the Prevention and Punishment of the
Crime of Genocide (Convention against Genocide), as well as in the statutes of the
International Criminal Tribunal for ex-Yugoslavia [ICTY] and the International
Tribunal for Rwanda [ICTR]. The threat to indigenous peoples can be characterized as
genocide that has been identified as the "crime of crimes". Bolsonaro government action
can be characterized as acts of deliberate degradation of the environment that lead to the
destruction of a group of human beings (or part of it), impairing their ability to maintain
their way of life and their culture. In this sense, the Rome Statute specifies, as an act
that characterizes genocide: "the group's intentional subjection to living conditions with
a view to causing its total or partial physical destruction".
Possessing the largest freshwater basin in the world and one of the largest mineral
reserves on the planet, the Amazon region has been targeted over the years of
clandestine research from various countries, especially the United States, through
“scientific missions” that smuggled samples from ores and plants. The complaints about
the clandestine action of foreigners in the Amazon, more precisely Americans are old. It
is important to note that the riches existing in the Amazon in terms of gigantic water
resources, mineral resources and biodiversity resources are sources of greed of the great
powers. This is due to the prospect of its scarcity until the middle of the 21st century.
The fact that the Legal Amazon is the largest mineral province in the world, estimated at
US $ 7 trillion, also contributes to its intervention by the great world powers.
The threat of internationalization of the Amazon that, despite the evidence, many people
still consider fantasy, is old, a reality that just does not see who does not want. In the
late 1960s a House of Representatives Parliamentary Commission of Inquiry undertook
a broad investigation into the foreign presence in the Amazon and concluded that some
20 million hectares were already held by foreigners. Brazilian governments after the
military dictatorship took some measures to protect the region, including the installation
of military bases and the Sipam (Amazon Protection System), using satellites, but it is
suspected that the information collected would pass through the Pentagon. before they

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arrived in Brazil, because the US company that supplied the equipment is the same one
that works for the US military.
It is hoped that the National Congress, which will have to be consulted in accordance
with the Constitution, may interrupt the Amazon delivery process by the Bolsonaro
government to the United States, rejecting his antinational projects in this region. The
handover of the Alcantara base to the United States, previously attempted by then-
President Fernando Henrique Cardoso and barred in Parliament by then-Deputy Waldir
Pires who prevented this action until the inauguration of President Lula, who buried the
claim of FHC. It is expected that the nationalist military who have been silent about
Bolsonaro's antinational actions, especially regarding the privatization of Petrobras and
denationalization of pre-salt, the handing over of the Alcântara space base to the United
States, and the denationalization of Embraer, oppose against the attack on national
interests represented by the delivery of the Amazon to the United States. The
sovereignty of the Amazon depends greatly on the Amazonians living in the remotest
places of this vast region. Without a policy for the development of the region, whose
main development agencies - SUDAM and the Banco da Amazônia - have been
scrapped over time, the area will be under constant threat of internationalization,
especially now under the Bolsonaro government, which intends to hand over Amazon
officially to the United States, to which he made Brazil submissive.
To prevent international intervention in Brazil against deforestation and in defense of
indigenous peoples, the Brazilian government must implement a development policy for
the Amazon region, having as one of the fundamental prerequisites to ensure the
preservation of the Amazon Forest that is threatened with destruction due to
deforestation and burning resulting from the expansion of agricultural and logging
activities, mineral exploitation that has been leaving a legacy of poverty and serious
social and environmental impacts, the implementation of highways that are causing
major environmental impacts and hydroelectric plants whose planned reservoirs can
cause so many impacts negative to the environment that its construction is not
recommended. In addition to preserving the Amazon rainforest, the Brazilian
government should strive to defend indigenous peoples living there.
Faced with the threat of handing over the Amazon by the Bolsonaro government to the
United States and the possibility of foreign intervention, it is up to the Brazilian people,
the Parliament, and the nationalist military to prevent this from happening by adopting
measures to prevent the handing over of the Amazon and to ensure its environmental
protection, ensuring that deforestation in the Amazon Forest is stopped and avoiding
possible conflicts over this issue.

Fernando Alcoforado, 79, awarded the medal of Engineering Merit of the CONFEA / CREA System,
member of the Bahia Academy of Education, engineer and doctor in Territorial Planning and Regional
Development by the University of Barcelona, university professor and consultant in the areas of
strategic planning, business planning, regional planning and planning of energy systems, is author of the
books Globalização (Editora Nobel, São Paulo, 1997), De Collor a FHC- O Brasil e a Nova (Des)ordem
Mundial (Editora Nobel, São Paulo, 1998), Um Projeto para o Brasil (Editora Nobel, São Paulo, 2000),
Os condicionantes do desenvolvimento do Estado da Bahia (Tese de doutorado. Universidade de
Barcelona,http://www.tesisenred.net/handle/10803/1944, 2003), Globalização e Desenvolvimento
(Editora Nobel, São Paulo, 2006), Bahia- Desenvolvimento do Século XVI ao Século XX e Objetivos
Estratégicos na Era Contemporânea (EGBA, Salvador, 2008), The Necessary Conditions of the
Economic and Social Development- The Case of the State of Bahia (VDM Verlag Dr. Müller
Aktiengesellschaft & Co. KG, Saarbrücken, Germany, 2010), Aquecimento Global e Catástrofe

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Planetária (Viena- Editora e Gráfica, Santa Cruz do Rio Pardo, São Paulo, 2010), Amazônia Sustentável-
Para o progresso do Brasil e combate ao aquecimento global (Viena- Editora e Gráfica, Santa Cruz do
Rio Pardo, São Paulo, 2011), Os Fatores Condicionantes do Desenvolvimento Econômico e Social
(Editora CRV, Curitiba, 2012), Energia no Mundo e no Brasil- Energia e Mudança Climática
Catastrófica no Século XXI (Editora CRV, Curitiba, 2015), As Grandes Revoluções Científicas,
Econômicas e Sociais que Mudaram o Mundo (Editora CRV, Curitiba, 2016), A Invenção de um novo
Brasil (Editora CRV, Curitiba, 2017), Esquerda x Direita e a sua convergência (Associação Baiana de
Imprensa, Salvador, 2018, em co-autoria) and Como inventar o futuro para mudar o mundo (Editora
CRV, Curitiba, 2019).