Bolsonaro uses war in Ukraine as an excuse to force the vote of a bill that allows economic exploitation of indigenous lands

President Jair Bolsonaro said that the war between Russia and Ukraine offers “a good opportunity” for the Congress to approve the bill 191/2020, which authorizes mining and other large enterprises on indigenous land. He argued that with the international conflict, Brazil may have difficulty continuing to import fertilizers from Russia and Belarus, which are among the main suppliers and account for about 85% of the fertilizers used in large-scale agriculture.

“Now then, with this international crisis and given the war, Congress has signaled to vote this project in an urgency regime. I hope that it will be approved in the House as early as March and in 2 or 3 years we will be able to say that we are not dependent on potassium imports for our agribusiness,” declared the president, as reported by the website Poder 360. The Minister of Agriculture, Tereza Cristina, denies the risk of shortage.

In an article on the occurrence, the Amazônia Real portal traced the history of PL 191 and the exploitation of potassium in the Amazon region by private initiative.