Environmental workers begin new strike

Federal employees of environmental agencies and the Environment Ministry in five states on Monday joined a full strike. Workers had already previously stopped activities in the field, such as inspections and licensing processes.

Workers in Acre, Pará, Paraíba, Rio Grande do Norte, and in the capital Brasília are the latest to join the full strike. Ascema, a union of public environmental workers, told The Brazilian Report that only essential activities will be kept during the strike.

Partial or full strikes of environmental workers have been ongoing nationwide since the beginning of the year.

As The Brazilian Report has shown, the Brazilian government has halted talks with the disgruntled workers, which could jeopardize the country’s environmental efforts.

Employees of Brazil’s Ibama environmental protection agency, the Environment Ministry, and the Chico Mendes Biodiversity Institute (ICMBio) began holding walkouts and go-slow operations in January, suspending all field operations.

According to Ascema, the area of the Amazon degraded due to activities such as fires, mining, and logging increased almost 17-fold in the first four months of 2024, compared to the same period in 2023. The number of fines issued in the period, meanwhile, plummeted 66 percent. The union says the numbers are a direct result of the workers’ go-slow tactics.

Ascema has also written that the strike suspended licensing processes in the oil and gas sector. “At least two gas pipelines and ten orders for seismic research and well drilling have already been directly affected” by the strike, a June 13 statement said. 

Back in May, an executive at oil giant Petrobras told investors that the Ibama strike could reduce production by up to 2 percent compared to what was projected for this year.

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