Brazil rejects G7 fire aid offer
● President takes swipe at French counterpart as hundreds of new blazes flare up in Amazon
Brazil rejected aid from G7 countries to fight wildfires in the Amazon, with a top official telling French President Emmanuel Macron to take care of “his home and his colonies”.
Nearly 80,000 forest fires have broken out in Brazil since the beginning of 2019 – just over half of them in the massive Amazon basin that regulates part of Earth’s carbon cycle and climate.
G7 countries at the Biarritz summit hosted by Macron made the $20m (R305m) aid offer to fight the blazes.
“We appreciate [the offer] but maybe those resources are more relevant to reforest Europe,” President Jair Bolsonaro’s chief of staff, Onyx Lorenzoni, told the G1 news website.
“Macron cannot even avoid a foreseeable fire in a church that is a world heritage site,” he said, referring to the April fire at the Notre-Dame Cathedral.
“What does he intend to teach our country?”
The presidency later confirmed the comments.
Brazilian environment minister Ricardo Salles had earlier told reporters they had welcomed the G7 funding to fight the fires that have swept across 950,000ha and prompted the deployment of the army.
But the Brazilian government later changed course.
“Brazil is a democratic, free nation that never had colonialist and imperialist practices, as perhaps is the objective of Macron,” Lorenzoni said.
Though about 60% of the Amazon is in Brazil, the vast forest also spreads over parts of eight other countries or territories, including the French overseas territory of Guiana.
Hundreds of new fires have flared up in the Brazilian part of the forest, data showed on Monday, even as military aircraft dumped water over hardhit areas.
Smoke choked Porto Velho city and forced the closure of the airport for nearly two hours as fires raged in the northwestern state of Rondonia where firefighting efforts are concentrated.
Bolsonaro, a climate-change sceptic, has faced criticism over his delayed response to the fires at home and thousands have taken to the streets in Brazil in recent days to denounce the destruction.
The blazes have also fuelled a diplomatic spat between Bolsonaro and Macron, who have locked horns repeatedly over the past week.
Macron has threatened to block a huge new trade deal between the EU and Latin America unless his Brazilian counterpart takes serious steps to protect the fast-shrinking forest from logging and mining.
Bolsonaro reacted by blasting Macron for having a “colonialist mentality” and days later endorsed vicious personal comments about the French president’s wife posted online.
Meanwhile, weather data and experts have indicated that weak rainfall is unlikely to extinguish the fires anytime soon, with pockets of precipitation until September 10 expected to bring only isolated relief.
Brazil’s firefighting initiative would only extinguish smaller blazes and help prevent new fires, experts said.
Larger infernos can only be put out by rainfall.
The Amazon rainy season usually begins in late September and takes weeks to build to widespread rains.
The rain forecast in the next 15 days is concentrated in areas that need it least, according to University of Sao Paulo professor of atmospheric sciences Maria Silva Dias.
“In some points you could put out some fires, certainly, but these are isolated points, not the whole area,” Dias said.
“The whole area needs it to rain more regularly, and this will only happen further down the line, around October.”
Dias estimated it would take at least 20mm of rain within one to two hours to put out a forest fire, and more for intense blazes.
‘Macron cannot even avoid a foreseeable fire in a church’ Onyx Lorenzoni
PRESIDENT’S CHIEF OF STAFF