Outrage as the Amazon forest burns
AMID global concern about raging fires in the Amazon, Brazil’s government has complained it is being smeared by critics who contend President Jair Bolsonaro is not doing enough to curb widespread deforestation.
The threat to what some call “the lungs of the planet” has ignited a bitter dispute about who is to blame during the tenure of a leader who has described Brazil’s rainforest protections as an obstacle to economic development and who traded Twitter jabs on Thursday with France’s president over the fires.
French President Emmanuel Macron called the wildfires an international crisis and said the leaders of the Group of 7 nations should hold urgent discussions about them at their summit in France this weekend.
“Our house is burning. Literally. The Amazon rainforest — the lungs which produces 20 per cent of our planet’s oxygen — is on fire,” Mr Macron tweeted.
Mr Bolsonaro fired back with his own tweet: “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.”
The debate came as Brazilian federal experts reported a record number of wildfires across the country this year, up 84 per cent over the same period in 2018.
Satellite images show smoke from the Amazon reaching across the Latin American continent to the Atlantic coast and Sao Paulo, Brazil’s biggest city, according to the World Meteorological Organisation.
Federal prosecutors in Brazil’s Amazon region launched investigations of increasing deforestation, according to local media.
Prosecutors said they planned to probe possible negligence by the national government in the enforcement of environmental codes.
Mr Bolsonaro had said nongovernmental groups could have been setting blazes in retaliation for losing state funds under his administration.