It is not just deforestation policy that needs to change, says Paulo Barreto, a researcher at Imazon, a Brazilian research organisation that promotes conservation and sustainable development in the Amazon forest.
Mr Barreto points to the rising rates of deforestation in the world’s largest rainforest. “Discourse has an effect. Because we have weak institutions, if [president Jair] Bolsonaro says ‘go’, all these guys in the field, they go — no matter what the deforestation policy is.”
