Brazilian President Michel Temer this month unexpectedly vetoed two highly controversial bills that would have substantially downsized two protected areas, thereby allowing more land clearing and development in the eastern Amazon. The vetoes defied widespread expectations that Temer would sign both bills into law, but green advocates are not celebrating. They’re calling the move a clever and misleading political maneuver aimed at ensuring that the larger of the two protected-land downsizings can be carried out without being vulnerable to a constitutional challenge. The bills Temer vetoed are called provisional measures—acts that ostensibly have great urgency and which, in order to take effect, must be approved by Congress within 180 days of being proposed by the president. The measures would have shrunk two protected... [Log in to read more]