Brazil: Elon Musk wants to fight against deforestation and connect the Amazon


The billionaire’s company SpaceX will deploy satellite internet over the Amazon rainforest, which will also help detect illegal deforestation.

The American multi-billionaire Elon Musk announced Friday in Brazil the launch of a program of “environmental monitoringof the Amazon and improving its access to the internet, just before a meeting with President Jair Bolsonaro. “I’m super excited to be in Brazil for the launch of Starlink for 19,000 unconnected schools in rural areas and for environmental monitoring in the Amazon.tweeted the richest man in the world, owner of space company SpaceX and automaker Tesla.

In November, the Brazilian government announced negotiations for SpaceX to deploy satellite internet over the Amazon rainforest and help detect illegal deforestation. The meeting between the Brazilian president and the billionaire took place in the morning in a luxury hotel in Porto Feliz, about 100 km from Sao Paulo. “As we are going to connect the Amazon, we have brought (to Brazil) one of the greatest business leaders in the world to help us in this mission“, declared on Twitter the Brazilian Minister of Communications, Fabio Faria, a message illustrated with two photos of him alongside Elon Musk, in the hotel in question.

Journalists present were kept at a distance from the establishment, surrounded by an important security device, noted an AFP team, which saw President Bolsonaro quickly get out of the car on his arrival to greet the forces of the order before entering the hotel. Thursday evening, he announced that he was going to have a character meeting “private“in Sao Paulo”with a very important person known all over the world“. That person “comes to offer his help for our Amazon“, had specified the president in his direct weekly on the social networks.

Fight against deforestation

The Amazon is a hot topic in Brazil, and in that country’s relations with the international community. Deforestation has increased sharply under the Bolsonaro government, accused of promoting impunity for gold miners, farmers or timber traffickers who illegally deforest the rainforest.

For Bolsonaro, this meeting is positive, because they are supposed to discuss the improvement of the surveillance of the Amazon.“Oliver Stuenkel, professor of international relations at the Getulio Vargas Foundation, told AFP. “But it is above all a facade speech, the specialists believe that the problem of deforestation is not the lack of monitoring, the Brazilian system is very sophisticated. The problem stems from the lack of intervention by environmental control officers“, he adds.

According to a study by the NGO collective Mapbiomas, the environmental protection bodies of the Bolsonaro government intervened after less than 3% of the deforestation alerts detected by the satellites of the monitoring system currently in force.

Takeover of Twitter

Elon Musk became a hero of the Bolsonarian clan when he announced his intention to buy Twitter last month, promising less restrictive moderation in the name of freedom of expression. Very active on social networks, Jair Bolsonaro has seen several of his publications deleted, including on Twitter, for misinformation.

O Globo indicated that the meeting was to take place in the presence of two ministers, Mr. Faria and that of Defence, Paulo Sergio Nogueira, as well as 13 business leaders, including the bosses of the main telecommunications companies in the country.

SpaceX launched in mid-February a second shipment of around fifty Starlink service satellites intended to provide an internet connection to customers around the world. Starlink allows residents of areas poorly served by fixed and mobile networks to have access to high-speed Internet, via thousands of small satellites. Elon Musk is at the head of a fortune estimated by Forbes magazine at 230 billion dollars. He recently announced his intention to buy the social network Twitter for 44 billion dollars, before suspending this project by conditioning it on obtaining data on the proportion of fake accounts.



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