Jair Bolsonaro, the president of Brazil, has changed many forest policies, since coming to power. Despite warnings from many groups (put down by him and his government as foreign meddling) these policies have resulted in significantly more fires.Â
Bolsonaro is now looking to blame NGOs and organisations or people who warned him.Â
His latest move is to say that the fires are caused by NGOs funded by Leonardo DiCaprio.
He is further stating that WWF, one of the groups working out in the forest, set the fires so photos of them can help fundraising.
This is obviously ridiculous, but this is precisely the point. Jair Bolsonaro is known as the tropical Trump partly because of his similar habit of lying, even when everyone knows it’s rubbish. Indeed, as President Bolsonaro has had investigations done, and they have found there is no truth in this story.Â
The worldwide population and all large bodies must call him out and ignore his lies. He is following a similar playbook to some of the other leaders around the world in blaming environmentalists for doing the very things that are working to halt.Â
It will be interesting to see in the next few years whether he continues to behave in this astounding way, or whether the rest of the world convinces him that lying is not helpful to meet his aims.