BIARRITZ: The G7 has agreed to spend $20 million (18 million euros) on the Amazon, mainly to send fire-fighting aircraft to tackle huge blazes engulfing parts of the world’s biggest rainforest, the presidents of France and Chile said on Monday.
The G7 club — comprising Britain, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan and the United States — also agreed to support a medium-term reforestation plan which will be unveiled at the UN in September, France’s Emmanuel Macron and Chile’s Sebastian Pinera said at a summit in southwest France.
Brazil would have to agree to any reforestation plan, as would indigenous communities living in the Amazon.
The initiative was announced after G7 leaders meeting in the resort of Biarritz held talks on the environment, focusing on the record number of fires destroying chunks of the Amazon.
Macron had declared the situation in the Amazon region an “international crisis” and made it one of the summit’s priorities.
He has threatened to block a huge new trade deal between the EU and Latin America unless Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro, a climate change sceptic, takes serious steps to protect the forest from logging and mining. “We must respond to the call of the forest which is burning today in the Amazon,” Macron said on Monday.
80,000 FOREST FIRES
Nearly 80,000 forest fires have been detected in Brazil since the beginning of the year, a little over half in the massive Amazon basin.
Hundreds of new fires have flared up in the Amazon in Brazil, data showed on Monday, even as military aircraft dumped water over hard-hit areas.
Smoke choked Port Velho city as fires raged in the northwestern state of Rondonia where fire-fighting efforts are concentrated.
Two C-130 Hercules aircraft carrying thousands of liters of water on Sunday began dousing fires devouring chunks of the world’s largest rainforest, which is seen as crucial to keeping climate change in check.
Swaths of the remote region have been scorched by the worst fires in years, sending thick smoke billowing into the sky.
Experts say increased land clearing during the months-long dry season to make way for crops or grazing has aggravated the problem this year.
Brazil’s President Jair Bolsonaro has ordered an investigation into reports that rural producers in the northern state of Para held a “day of fire” on August 10 in a show of support for the far-right leader’s efforts to weaken environmental protection monitoring in the region.
The worsening crisis has fueled a row between Bolsonaro and his French counterpart Emmanuel Macron, who has been piling pressure on the Brazilian leader to do more to protect the forest. Bolsonaro has lashed out at Macron over his criticism and suggested that NGOs could be setting the fires to embarrass him. But at the weekend he finally caved in to international pressure to save a region crucial for maintaining a stable global climate, deploying two aircraft to douse fires and authorising the army to help tackle the blazes.
Speaking in Biarritz, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said new planting was needed “to preserve this universal heritage, which is absolutely essential for the well-being of the world’s population.” He said the issue would be discussed during the UN General Assembly in New York in September. — AFP
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