The consequences of this economic model result in the destruction of the Pampa, a South American biome that, in Brazil, exists only in Rio Grande do Sul and whose biodiversity is being crushed by the advance of monocultures. A study by MapBiomas reveals that between 1985 and 2022, the Brazilian Pampa lost 2.9 million hectares of its vegetation (32% of the existing area).

It is important to shed light on the environmental setbacks of the recent period to understand how the 2024 floods affected a state without prevention and reaction capacity. As early as 2015, upon assuming government, José Ivo Sartori (MDB) implemented a project to dismantle the state, extinguishing various public bodies, such as the Zoobotanical Foundation (FZB). Among the FZB’s responsibilities was the publication of the list of endangered species in Rio Grande do Sul, which was last done in 2014: since then, the state has experienced a blackout in the area.

The State Secretariat for the Environment (Sema), created 25 years ago, was merged with the Infrastructure department at the beginning of the Leite government and completely restructured. There is a lack of civil servants, omission in the fulfilment of functions – such as validations of the Rural Environmental Registry (CAR) – in addition to serious suffocation of the technical area. Responsible for managing the 23 environmental conservation units, Sema has only 51 park rangers, making each one responsible for more than 5,000 hectares of area.

Linked to Sema, the State Environmental Council (Consema) was co-opted, with representation intended for the technical staff of the Secretariat appropriated by commissioned government positions. With 32 seats, the majority of councillors of the body are appointed by the government, by business corporations and entities linked to agribusiness. Biologist Paulo Brack, 1^st alternate councillor for PSOL in Porto Alegre, has been working at Consema for almost 20 years and has already seen several measures contrary to environmental preservation passing through the body. In 2019, he requested that the Council discuss the 480 changes to the State Environmental Code that the government was proposing, but the majority of the group, shockingly, said it was not a matter for the body.

These changes, which devastated the State Environmental Code (CEMA), were approved as a matter of urgency by the Legislative Assembly. One of the main changes imposed by the government was the creation of the Environmental Licence by Commitment (LAC), in which projects are approved expressly and only then inspected. Professors Gonçalo Ferraz and Fernando Becker, from the Institute of Biosciences at UFRGS, carried out a detailed study of all the changes and concluded that: they seem to follow three principles: eliminate, weaken, and subvert: “All articles on areas of special use have disappeared, which not being conservation units need to be defined and protected. The technical guidelines for the preparation of environmental impact studies and reports disappear, as well as the tools and mechanisms for air quality control.”

In June 2021, the Leite government approved a bill that released the use of pesticides banned in Europe and the USA, where they are manufactured, transforming Rio Grande do Sul into a rubbish bin for poisonous products banned abroad. A month later, another attack was approved: a PEC authorising the concession of environmental conservation units to the private sector. In the first round, my vote was the only one against among all deputies. Three years later, some of these units have already been granted, without respect for their management plans, nor listening to Sema’s technicians.

After the tragedy of the floods, the opposition benches in the Legislative Assembly presented a set of projects to revoke the environmental setbacks of the recent period. The “revocation” proposes the return of the FZB, the end of the release of pesticides banned in their countries of origin, the annulment of the dismantling of the State Environmental Code and the prohibition of dams and reservoirs in Permanent Preservation Areas (APPs). The projects create a State Plan for Climate Change, the RS Water Institute and declare the Pampa as a State Natural Heritage. The PSOL bench, composed of myself and Deputy Matheus Gomes, is at the forefront of this fight. In addition, I also presented the PEC on Climate Resilience, which provides for the application of 1% of the state’s net revenue in prevention of environmental disasters.

Unfortunately, seven months after the May floods, history repeats itself and virtually nothing has changed. At the beginning of December 2024, a new storm once again flooded various regions of Porto Alegre and more than 60 municipalities were impacted, with more than 400,000 people without electricity. A month earlier, the Legislative Assembly approved the budget for 2025 – with our vote against – with insufficient resources in the face of the challenges of the climate crisis.

More than a debate about figures, it is the political understanding that needs to change in order to understand that we are living in a permanent climate emergency, the result of a capitalist system that seeks to expand its activities and profit at any cost. In the process of reproducing this unfair and destructive system, the devastation of the environment is not a consequence, but a necessity for its existence. Politicians wearing the orange waistcoat of Civil Defence in times of natural disasters, as Leite and Melo do, end up being the theatrical staging of the management of a crisis whose roots they help to cultivate. If there is no planet B, acting to mitigate damage, reduce risks, and work to effectively change the system generating this catastrophe is urgent.

*State Deputy for PSOL in Rio Grande do Sul, she is president of the Lauro Campos and Marielle Franco Foundation.

**Text published in edition 3 of Jatobá magazine.

Luciana Genro

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