Brazil's far-right incoming president Jair Bolsonaro plans to place the agriculture sector in charge of the environment, which experts say is a threat to the all-important Amazon Rainforest.

"Agriculture and environment will be in the same ministry, as we've said from the beginning," said Bolsonaro's chief of staff Onyx Lorenzoni. 

In the run-up to his election last weekend, Bolsonaro had said that environmental concerns would no longer be considered when it came unleashing the economic beast.  "Let's be clear - the future ministry will come from the productive sector.  We won't have any more fights over this." 

This sort of talk won him the backing of the agribusiness sector, which has long wanted to speed up the removal of the Amazon Rainforest.  Already, the pristine tropical wilderness is being deforested at a rate of some 52,000 square kilometers per year - that's an area the size of Costa Rica. 

For indigenous groups, it's the end to centuries of their ways of life and the loss of their land. 

For Brazil, it means the loss of its unique wealth of fresh water in the Amazon watersheds, and the evaporation that creates clouds which rain on the eat and fill the reservoirs. 

For the world, it could mean that Global Warming increases even faster than expected, because the forest that is vital to the exchange of oxygen for carbon dioxide in the atmosphere will be gone.

"To increase deforestation and greenhouse gas emissions is to leave each and every one of us more vulnerable to an increasing risk of climate extremes," said Carlos Rittl, executive secretary of the Brazilian Climate Observatory.

"This disastrous decision will bring serious damage to Brazil and will pass on to consumers abroad the idea that all Brazilian agribusiness survives thanks to the destruction of forests," said former environment minister Marina Silva, who added that the move was "tragic".