Nations pledge $20 million to fight Amazon forest fires

The Group of Seven nations on Monday pledged $20 million to help Amazon countries fight fires, even as Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro said rich countries were treating the region like a “colony.”

The G-7 pledge came despite tensions between European countries and the Brazilian president, who suggested the West was angling to exploit Brazil’s natural resources.

“Look, does anyone help anyone — not including poor people, you know — without something in return? What have they wanted there for so long?” he said to journalists outside the presidential palace.

Bolsonaro initially questioned whether activist groups might have started the fires in an effort to damage the credibility of his government. Bolsonaro has called for looser environmental regulations in the world’s largest rainforest to spur development.

In response, European leaders threatened to block a major trade deal with Brazil that would benefit the very agricultural interests accused of driving deforestation.

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

Even so, Germany and Norway recently cut tens of millions of dollars in donations to Brazilian forestry projects, saying Bolsonaro’s administration isn’t committed to curbing deforestation.

French President Emmanuel Macron said of Bolsonaro: “It’s sad. First for him and for the Brazilians.”

Bolsonaro, in turn, accused the French leader of treating the region “as if we were a colony.”

Bolsonaro has announced he would send 44,000 soldiers to help battle the blazes, which mostly seem to be charring land deforested, perhaps illegally, for farming and ranching rather than burning through stands of trees.