Brazil's Climate Change Sceptic Government Says Warnings About The Fires Consuming The Amazon Are 'Sensationalist,' 'Hysterical,' And 'Misleading'

Business Insider - Sinéad Baker

A composite image showing fires in Brazil’s Mato Grosso state in August and Brazilian President Jail Bolsonaro in January 2019. AP/EVARISTO SA/AFP/Getty Images/Business Insider

Key Points Brazil’s government is calling warnings about the record fires in the Amazon “sensationalist,” and claiming the fires are not an international problem. Brazil’s government has ministers that reject climate change, and its president, Jair Bolsonaro, has advocated using the rainforest for industrial activity. The equivalent of three football pitches worth of the Amazon is currently burning every minute, spurring international leaders to call for actions to save the rainforest. But Bolsonaro called the fires an “internal matter for Brazil and other Amazonian countries,” and rebuked calls from French President Emmanuel Macron for the issue to be discussed at this weekend’s G7 summit. Other Brazilian officials are also dismissing concerns about the Amazon, but experts and activists say the government has allowed the destruction of large chunks of the rainforest for activities like logging and farming.

Brazil’s government is downplaying the record number of fires that have ripped through the Amazon this year, calling international warnings about the damage to the rainforest “sensationalist,” and “hysterical and misleading.”
The government is painting itself as the subject of an international smear campaign as activists and political leaders around the world urge action and decry state policies that have allowed increased clearing of the forest for farming and logging, which has likely been the source of many of the fires.
Brazil’s President, Jair Bolsonaro, accused French President Emmanuel Macron of trying to “make personal political gains in an internal matter” after the French leader called the fires an “international crisis.”
Macron called on Thursday for the fires to be discussed at the G7 summit of world leaders, which begins on Saturday.
“Our house is burning. Literally. The Amazon rain forest – the lungs which produces 20% of our planet’s oxygen – is on fire. It is an international crisis. Members of the G7 Summit, let’s discuss this emergency first order in two days! #ActForTheAmazon,” he tweeted.
“I regret that Macron seeks to make personal political gains in an internal matter for Brazil and other Amazonian countries. The sensationalist tone he used does nothing to solve the problem,” Bolsonaro tweeted in reply.
Macron received support from Canada’s Justin Trudeau. But he may not ultimately get support from US President Donald Trump or other leaders like the UK’s Boris Johnson at the G7.
Bolsonaro also accused Macron of having a “colonialist mentality” for suggesting that the issue be discussed at the G7. Neither Brazil, nor other Amazonian nations like Colombia and Peru are members of the group.

Smoke billows during a fire in an area of the Amazon rainforest near Humaita, Amazonas State, Brazil on August 17. Ueslei Marcelino/Reuters

Smoke billows during a fire in an area of the Amazon rainforest near Humaita, Amazonas State, Brazil on August 14. Ueslei Marcelino/Reuters

Bolsonaro expressed frustration with other countries’ concern about the fires during a Facebook live on Thursday.
“These countries that send money here, they don’t send it out of charity … They send it with the aim of interfering with our sovereignty,” he said, Reuters reported.
António Guterres, the secretary-general of the United Nations has also called for action to save the Amazon, while Ireland’s prime minister said he will try and block a trade agreement between the EU and Mercosur, a South American trade bloc, if Brazil does not take action to save the Amazon.
Amnesty International Secretary General Kumi Naidoo said: “Instead of spreading outrageous lies or denying the scale of deforestation taking place, we urge the President to take immediate action to halt the progress of these fires.”
INPE, Brazil’s space research centre, has detected more than 74,000 fires so far in 2019 – almost double the number recorded in all of 2018.

An aerial view shows a deforested plot of the Amazon near Porto Velho. Reuters

Bolsonaro’s response, and his insistence that the fires raging across the source of 20% of the world’s oxygen is a matter for only Brazil and other Amazonian countries, has been mirrored by other Brazilian officials.

Filipe Martins, one of Bolsonaro’s advisors, said the Amazon would be saved by Brazil and not “the empty, hysterical and misleading rhetoric of the mainstream media, transnational bureaucrats and NGOs,” Sky News reported.
Onyx Lorenzoni, Bolsonaro’s chief of staff, accused European countries of exaggerating the issue to harm Brazil’s commercial interests.
“There is deforestation in Brazil, yes, but not at the rate and level that they say,” he said, according to The Associated Press, which cited Brazilian news website globo.com.
In May, Bolsonaro fired the head of INPE, Ricardo Galvao, saying that the institution had exaggerated the extent of deforestation in the Amazon, and calling one of its reports a “lie.”
“We cannot accept sensationalism, or the disclosure of inaccurate numbers that cause great damage to Brazil’s image,” Bolsonaro said at the time.

Members of Suriname indigenous tribes pray for the protection of the Amazon and Brazilian indigenous tribes on August 9, 2019. REUTERS/Ranu Abhelakh

Despite his protestations, Bolsonaro said that Brazil does not have the resources to fight the fires itself.
“The Amazon is bigger than Europe, how will you fight criminal fires in such an area,” he told reporters on Thursday, according to Reuters. “We do not have the resources for that.”
Some European countries had decided to withhold money meant to help protect the Brazilian rainforests as Brazil’s leadership appeared uncommitted to the project, according to the AP.
The fires have put a new spotlight on Bolsonaro’s policies after he pushed the opening of the rainforest for industrial activities like logging and farming.

A tract of Amazon jungle burns as it is being cleared by loggers and farmers in Novo Airao, Amazonas state, Brazil August 21, 2019. Bruno Kelly/Reuters

Alberto Setzer, a senior scientist at Brazil’s INPEtold CNN that about 99% of fires in the Amazon start by humans actions, “either on purpose or by accident,” and that the fires are often used to clear the land for industry.
Bolsonaro has also repeatedly pushed an evidence-free theory that NGOs have started the fires in order to make Brazil look bad.
On Thursday, he acknowledged that farmers may be starting fires.

Links

• The blazes in the Amazon are so big they can be seen from space. One map shows the alarming scale of the fires.
  
• The ‘lungs of the planet’ are burning at a record rate. If too much of the Amazon disappears, that ‘dieback’ could turn the land into a savannah.
  
• Amazon fires created a smoke eclipse in the skies above Brazil’s largest city, 2,000 miles away
  
• Brazil’s president is blaming farmers clearing land for the fires raging through the Amazon. Here’s how big Brazil’s farming industry really is.
  
• Brazil’s president baselessly claimed that NGOs set the Amazon on fire on purpose to make him look bad
  
• 99% of the fires in the Amazon rainforest were started by humans, one expert says – here’s why they have gotten so out of control
• Fires in the Amazon could be part of a doomsday scenario that sees the rainforest spewing carbon into the atmosphere and speeding up climate change even more
• Here’s what you can do to help the burning, ravaged Amazon rainforest
• The Amazon is losing about 3 football fields’ worth of rainforest per minute