India and Brazil - Comparing Environmental Policies in 16 Countries - page 180

was diverted by the crisis and eventual impeachment of President Collor
de Mello due to corruption.
Democracy returns: In 1985 the military voluntarily ceded power back
to civilians. The generals were frustrated, and the people hated them. The
proximate cause was hyper-inflation caused by the gigantic debt. Brazil
had the highest foreign debt of any developing country. A major reason
was that the 1973 oil crisis raised the cost of petroleum so high, and the
additional price increases in 1979 made it worse. To pay for energy Brazil
borrowed from commercial banks in New York and London, and the
World Bank. This sparked high inflation and economic stagnation. The
people blamed the generals, so they quit.
José Sarney was the first democratic president after the military vol-
untarily ceded power. Environmental protection took a back seat due to
the transition from military power, hyper-inflation, gigantic foreign debt,
and corruption. he Sarney government had limited success. In 1990 he
was followed by Fernando Affonso Collor de Mello, whose chief distinc-
tion was presiding over the 1992 Earth Summit. In fact he was thoroughly
corrupt and was impeached a few months after the Summit concluded.
His vice president, Itamar Franco, took over and gave authority to his eco-
nomic minister, Fernando Henrique Cardoso, to fight the hyper-inflation.
Cardoso abolished the old currency and for a while pegged the Brazilian
currency to the US dollar. Amazingly this worked, ending 40 years of
high inflation. This success earned Cardoso the presidential nomination
in 1994. He won the election and was reelected in 1998. In 2002 Brazilian
voters turned a bit to the left to elect the nominee of the Workers Party,
Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, and reelected him in 2006. In fact Lula governed
as a centrist rather than a leftist.
When Sarney took over from the military in 1985 he did some things
for the environment. The SEMA was reorganized into IBAMA. The
major parties adopted proenvironmental planks in their platforms. At
this time the deforestation of the Amazon Basin was at an all-time high.
This came about because of a well-meaning policy begun about 1955
to move poor people out of the slums of São Paulo, Rio de Janeiro, and
other overpopulated cities into the interior. The expectation was that they
would be given land and become prosperous farmers. Since the founding
of the country, visionaries had viewed the interior as a potential source of
prosperity. To some extent it copied the US expansion into the midwest
during the 19th century. The difference was that, whereas the North
American heartland was suitable for agriculture, the Brazilian one was