Mon 26 August 2019:
The G7 nations have agreed to spend more than $20m to fight record fires tearing through the Amazon rainforest, an initiative Brazil’s President Jair Bolsonaro said treated his country like a “colony or no-man’s land”.
The presidents of France and Chile announced the pledge at the G7 summit in the French town of Biarritz on Monday, with the French leader, Emmanuel Macron, saying: “We must respond to the call of the forest which is burning today in the Amazon.”
The G7 club – comprising Britain, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan and the United States – also agreed to support a medium-term reforestation plan, said Macron.
Satellites have recorded more than 41,000 fires in Brazil’s Amazon region so far this year – more than half of those in this month alone. Experts say most of the fires are set by farmers or ranchers clearing existing farmland.
The tropical forest covers more than five million square kilometres across nine countries, including Brazil, Bolivia, Colombia, Ecuador, and Venezuela. Its protection is seen as vital to the fight against climate change because of the vast amounts of carbon dioxide it absorbs.
“Countries urgently need firefighters and specialised water bombers. This will be the first step that will be implemented immediately. The second phase is to protect these forests, protect the biodiversity they contain and reforest this region of the world,” he said.
Macron, the host of this year’s G7 summit, had declared the situation in the Amazon “an international crisis” and made the issue one of the gathering’s priorities.
He also threatened to block a huge new trade deal between the European Union and Latin America unless Bolsonaro, a climate change sceptic, takes serious steps to protect the Amazon.
Brazil would have to agree to any reforestation plan, as would local communities.
Think your friends would be interested? Share this story!
