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Comment by farias0 | Hacker News Reader

But I think the discussion is not only about how much money, but who gets it. The government? Will they give it to local farmers?

The past administrations were happy about fighting illegal deforestation. In this case they still could leverage foreign aid using the argument you mentioned, yeah. But the current one is removing as many regulations as they can get away with so those farmers can go nuts, and they don't seem like they want to negotiate.

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> The past administrations were happy about fighting illegal deforestation.

No way. You are trying to recreate the history. The last administrations were the worse in term of numbers.

Look the Table on: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deforestation_of_the_Amazon_ra..., "Anual Forest Loss".. look around 1999 and 2008.

Here some articles describing the scenarios back in the days:

https://www.reuters.com/article/idUSN13420813

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-latin-america-11888875

I don't get your point. Bolsonaro is the fourth Brazilian president since 2008. And yes, environment weren't the top priority at any point, but there were actual efforts to lower deforestation, and the last URL you linked illustrates.

Well look to the table. The numbers look the same regardless of the president in place.

You mean the table on Wikipedia? Because the numbers lowered substantially after 2005.

For sure I mean the table on Wikipedia. If you look 2013 and 2015, there were as well upside variations. Bolsonaro started his term on 1. January, 2019. To somehow attribute anything to him in this regards, you should wait at least 50% of his term. Unless the focus isn't in his work as president but on him as person.

> The past administrations were happy about fighting illegal deforestation.

In theory, yes. In practice, not so much.

They were certainly better at it than the current administration.

Not really, please look at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deforestation_of_the_Amazon_ra... "Loss Rates".

Indeed, there is no easy answer. I think the majority of that money, if it existed, should be used for building infrastructure and financing public healthcare and education. I.e. it could replace some of the sources for the government budget, or add to it. Obviously there would be strict controls for suspending the funds if deforestation continued. If the government budget became even slightly dependent on such a fund, it'd be in the interest of every administration to make sure it kept coming. From the government's perspective, beef and soya are important exports so the funding would have to be comparable to that.

A universal basic income wouldn’t be a terrible idea.

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