G7 leaders vow to help fight Amazon fires, repair damage

The G7 has agreed to spend €20 million ($33m) on the Amazon to tackle the huge ­blazes engulfing the rainforest.

Jair Bolsonaro with Army chief General Edson Leal Pujol in Brasilia last Friday. Picture: AP

Biarritz: The G7 has agreed to spend €20 million ($33m) on the Amazon, mainly to send firefighting aircraft to tackle the huge ­blazes engulfing the world’s biggest rainforest, the presidents of France and Chile announced last night.

The G7 club — comprising Britain, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan and the US — has also agreed to support a ­medium-term reforestation plan that will be unveiled at the UN in September, France’s Emmanuel Macron and Chile’s Sebastian Pinera said at the G7 summit in southwest France.

Brazil would have to agree to any reforestation plan, as would local communities. The initiative was announced after G7 leaders meeting in the resort of Biarritz held talks on the environment, which focused on the fires destroying chunks of the Amazon.

The US President was a notable absentee at the environment talks, his empty chair visible to reporters.

Mr Macron had made the issue one of the summit’s priorities, and 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 Amazon.

“We must respond to the call of the forest which is burning today in the Amazon,” he said.

Nearly 80,000 forest fires have been detected in Brazil since the beginning of the year, a little over half in the Amazon region.

Under pressure from the international community to save a crucial area for maintaining a stable global climate, Mr Bolsonaro ­finally deployed on Sunday two C-130 Hercules aircraft to douse the fires.

Ahead of the gathering, Mr Macron called on world leaders to hold urgent talks on the fires ripping through the world’s largest rainforest, pledging “concrete measures” to tackle them. ­Although about 60 per cent of the Amazon is in Brazil, the vast forest takes in parts of eight other countries: Bolivia, ­Colombia, ­Ecuador, French Guiana, ­Guyana, Peru, ­Suriname and ­Venezuela.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel said her country and others would talk with Brazil about reforestation in the Amazon once fires there had been extinguished.

“Of course (this is) Brazilian territory, but we have a question here of the rainforests that is really a global question,” she said.

“The lung of our whole Earth is affected, and so we must find ­common solutions.”

The Pope also added his voice to a chorus of concern over the fires in Brazil, which borders his homeland of Argentina, and urged people to pray so “they are controlled as quickly as possible”.

Mr Bolsonaro tweeted that he had talked by phone with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who said Israel would send a specialised plane to help in the firefighting.

On Friday, he announced 44,000 soldiers would be sent to help battle the fires that are scattered across Brazil’s share of the vast Amazon, that is seen as a global bulwark against climate change. Only a few hundred troops had been sent so far.

The country’s satellite monitoring agency has recorded more than 41,000 fires in the Amazon region so far this year, with more than half of those this month alone. Experts say most of the fires are set by farmers or ranchers clearing existing farmland, but the same monitoring agency has reported a sharp increase in deforestation this year as well. Brazil’s federal police agency said it would investigate reports that farmers in the state of Para, one of those most affected by the blazes, had called for “a day of fire” to ignite fires on August 10.

Local news media said the group organised over WhatsApp to show support for Mr Bolson­aro’s efforts to loosen environmental regulations.

Justice Minister Sergio Moro, who oversees the police, said on Twitter that Mr Bolsonaro “asked for a rigorous investigation” and said “the criminal fires will be ­severely punished”.

People demonstrated in Rio de Janeiro and other Brazilian cities on Sunday demanding that Mr Bolsonaro’s administration do more to protect the Amazon.

Critics have accused Mr Bolsonaro’s pro-development policies of encouraging farmers and graziers to increase efforts to strip away the forest, though the President has issued repeated pledges recently to protect the area, and backed that up by sending in soldiers and other federal forces.

Mrs Merkel noted Mr Bolso­naro was putting “significant forces” into the effort to save the rainforest. Mr Bolsonaro has had a tense relationship with foreign governments — including Germany’s — and non-governmental groups he accuses of meddling in the management of the Amazon.

Mr Macron’s office on Friday complained that the Brazilian leader “had lied to him” about ­environmental commitments.

AP