SAO PAULO (Reuters) - Brazil’s newly inaugurated President Jair Bolsonaro has issued an executive order saying that the ministry of agriculture will be responsible for indigenous land in a victory for agribusiness that is likely to enrage environmentalists, according to the official gazette on Wednesday. During his presidential campaign, far-right Jair Bolsonaro said he was considering placing Indigenous affairs under the Ministry of Agriculture, alleging lands should be opened to commercial activities that are currently banned. “Less than a million people live in these isolated places in Brazil, where they are exploited and manipulated by NGOs,” Bolsonaro tweeted, referring to non-profit groups. Together we will integrate those citizens and give value to all Brazilians.”

The agriculture minister did not mention indigenous tribes in her first speech on the job Wednesday, which she used to criticize those that in her view consider the Latin American nation “a transgressor to be incriminated” when it comes to climate change. Observatorio do Clima, a network of 45 Brazilian civil society groups, criticized the executive orders, calling them “only the first step on meeting Bolsonaro’s campaign promises of dismantling environmental governance, stripping indigenous peoples of their rights and opening up indigenous lands for business.”

“The attack on FUNAI goes beyond the wildest dreams of the rural caucus, who had tried for years to pass a constitutional amendment transferring the demarcation of indigenous lands from the president to Congress,” the nonprofit said. Brazil's President Jair Bolsonaro has decreed the FUNAI agency in charge of indigenous affairs will no longer have a say over creating and defining the boundaries of lands occupied by indigenous people (AFP Photo/CARL DE SOUZA)

Brasília (AFP) - Brazil's new president, Jair Bolsonaro, has stripped an agency of the responsibility to demarcate indigenous lands in a move that has unsettled native rights groups and even some farm businesses that will benefit. Slideshow (2 Images)

A former army captain and longtime member of Congress, Bolsonaro said at his inauguration on Tuesday that he had freed the country from “socialism and political correctness.”

An admirer of Donald Trump, Bolsonaro has suggested he will follow the U.S. president’s lead and pull out of the Paris climate change accord.
President of Brazil Jair Bolsonaro issues a decree to place the responsibility for "identification, delimitation, demarcation and registration of lands traditionally occupied by indigenous people" on the Ministry of Agriculture, instead of the indigenous peoples affairs agency, FUNAI. The management of public forests also goes to the agriculture ministry. The move is seen as a big win for the industrial agribusiness lobby.