Bolsonaro demands apology from Macron
Brazil
Jair Bolsonaro, the Brazilian president, has said he may accept the $22 million (NZ$34.5M) of aid offered by G7 countries to help combat forest fires in the Amazon, providing that Emmanuel Macron, the French president, apologises for calling him a ‘‘liar’’.
Bolsonaro initially rejected the $22m, believing that the offer of aid was a veiled attempt to undermine Brazil’s sovereignty in the region. This sentiment is shared by farmers associations and regional governments, who fear that France is trying to sabotage Brazilian agribusiness.
Onyx Lorenzoni, Bolsonaro’s chief of staff, was also dismissive of the aid, saying it would be better used to ‘‘reforest Europe’’. ‘‘Mr Macron can’t even avoid a foreseeable fire in a church... what is he trying to teach our country?’’, Lorenzoni said, referring to the blaze at the Notre Dame cathedral in April.
G7 nations announced that $22m would be made available to help combat forest fires which have been devastating the Amazon region since the beginning of August. Official statistics show that the number of fires in the Amazon has increased by over 83 per cent since 2018, reaching the highest level since 2012, when records were first collected.
Meanwhile, Bolsonaro’s approval ratings are dwindling in Brazil, according to recent opinion polls. Surveys have put the president’s rejection rates at 39.5 per cent, up from the 19 per cent recorded in February.
The hostility shown by the Brazilian government toward Macron is partly fuelled by a long-held nationalist fear that foreign interests intend to ‘‘steal’’ the Amazon from Brazil.
Much of this backlash was prompted by Macron’s first statement on the forest fires, in which he referred to the Amazon rainforest as ‘‘our house’’.
Early this week, the French president spoke of the need to create an international statute to govern over the Amazon rainforest, which the Bolsonaro administration saw as a threat to Brazil’s sovereignty.
‘‘There is a clear effort to extrapolate real environmental problems into a fabricated ‘crisis’, as a pretext to introduce external control mechanisms in the Amazon,’’ said Ernesto Araujo, Brazil’s foreign minister.
Mauro Mendes, governor of Brazil’s leading grain-producing state Mato Grosso, said that Macron’s comments about the Amazon were intended to ‘‘create a negative climate for Brazil and support French producers’’.
Bolsonaro was elected in 2018, thanks in part to the support of Brazil’s huge agribusiness industry. Despite growing pressure from abroad, farmers’ associations have stuck by the far-right president. –