{"id":227837,"date":"2019-08-23T02:01:28","date_gmt":"2019-08-23T06:01:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/?p=227837"},"modified":"2019-08-23T03:23:27","modified_gmt":"2019-08-23T07:23:27","slug":"global-worry-over-amazon-fires-escalates-bolsonaro-defiant","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/2019\/08\/23\/global-worry-over-amazon-fires-escalates-bolsonaro-defiant\/","title":{"rendered":"Global worry over Amazon fires escalates; Bolsonaro defiant"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" style=\"border: none; overflow: hidden;\" src=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/plugins\/post.php?href=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.facebook.com%2FEmmanuelMacron%2Fposts%2F2510578642508040&amp;width=500\" width=\"500\" height=\"652\" frameborder=\"0\" scrolling=\"no\"><\/iframe><br \/>\nRIO DE JANEIRO &#8212; Amid global concern about raging fires in the\u00a0Amazon, Brazil&#8217;s government complained Thursday that it is being targeted in smear campaign by critics who contend President Jair Bolsonaro is not doing enough to curb widespread deforestation.<\/p>\n<p>The threat to what some call \u201cthe lungs of the planet\u201d has ignited a bitter dispute about who is to blame during the tenure of a leader who has described Brazil&#8217;s rainforest protections as an obstacle to economic development and who traded Twitter jabs on Thursday with France&#8217;s president over the fires.<\/p>\n<p>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.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cOur house is burning. Literally. The\u00a0Amazon\u00a0rain forest &#8212; the lungs which produces 20% of our planet&#8217;s oxygen &#8212; is on fire,\u201d Macron tweeted.<\/p>\n<p>Bolsonaro fired back with his own tweet: \u201cI 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.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Onyx Lorenzoni, the president&#8217;s chief of staff, earlier in the day accused European countries of exaggerating environmental problems in Brazil in order to disrupt its commercial interests.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThere is deforestation in Brazil, yes, but not at the rate and level that they say,\u201d said Lorenzoni, according to the Brazilian news website globo.com.<\/p>\n<p>His allegation came after Germany and Norway, citing Brazil&#8217;s apparent lack of commitment to fighting deforestation, decided to withhold more than $60 million in funds earmarked for sustainability projects in Brazilian forests.<\/p>\n<p>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\u00a0Amazon\u00a0reaching across the Latin American continent to the Atlantic coast and Sao Paulo, Brazil&#8217;s biggest city, according to the World Meteorological Organization.<\/p>\n<p>U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres tweeted: \u201cIn the midst of the global climate crisis, we cannot afford more damage to a major source of oxygen and biodiversity. The\u00a0Amazon\u00a0must be protected.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Federal prosecutors in Brazil&#8217;s\u00a0Amazon\u00a0region launched investigations of increasing deforestation, according to local media. Prosecutors said they plan to probe possible negligence by the national government in the enforcement of environmental codes.<\/p>\n<p>Bolivia is also struggling to contain big fires, many believed to have been set by farmers clearing land for cultivation.<\/p>\n<p>Bolsonaro said there was a \u201cvery strong\u201d indication that some non-governmental groups could be setting blazes in retaliation for losing state funds under his administration. He did not provide any evidence.<\/p>\n<p>Bolsonaro, who won election last year, also accused media organizations of exploiting the fires to undermine his government.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cMost of the media wants Brazil to end up like Venezuela,\u201d he said, referring to political and economic turbulence in the neighbouring South American country.<\/p>\n<p>London-based Amnesty International blamed the Brazilian government for the fires, which have escalated international concern over the vast rainforest that is a major absorber of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.<\/p>\n<p>The rights group this year documented illegal land invasions and arson attacks near indigenous territories in the\u00a0Amazon, including Rondonia state, where many fires are raging, said Kumi Naidoo, Amnesty&#8217;s secretary general.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cInstead 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,\u201d Naidoo said.<\/p>\n<p>The WWF conservation group also challenged Bolsonaro&#8217;s allegations about NGOs, saying they divert \u201cthe focus of attention from what really matters: the well-being of nature and the people of the\u00a0Amazon.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Brazil contains about 60 per cent of the\u00a0Amazon\u00a0rainforest, whose degradation could have severe consequences for global climate and rainfall. Bolsonaro, who has said he wants to convert land for cattle pastures and soybean farms, won office after channeling outrage over the corruption scandals of the former government.<\/p>\n<p>Filipe Martins, an adviser to Bolsonaro, said on Twitter that the Brazilian government is committed to fighting illegal deforestation and that many other countries are causing environmental damage.<\/p>\n<p>The\u00a0Amazon\u00a0will be saved by Brazil and not \u201cthe empty, hysterical and misleading rhetoric of the mainstream media, transnational bureaucrats and NGOs,\u201d Martins said.<\/p>\n<p>Sergio Bergman, Argentina&#8217;s environment minister, appealed for people to overcome political or ideological divisions to protect the environment. He spoke at a five-day U.N. workshop on climate change in Brazil&#8217;s northern state of Bahia.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe all, in a way, understand that it is not possible to keep using natural resources without limits,\u201d Bergman said.<\/p>\n<p>&#8212;&#8212;<\/p>\n<p>Associated Press journalists Victor Caivano in Salvador, Brazil, and Christopher Torchia in Caracas, Venezuela, contributed to this report.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>RIO DE JANEIRO &#8212; Amid global concern about raging fires in the\u00a0Amazon, Brazil&#8217;s government complained Thursday that it is being &hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":33,"featured_media":227838,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[54365,16,17],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-227837","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-instagram","category-news","category-news-w","mauthors-marcelo-silva-de-sousa","mauthors-the-associated-press"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/227837","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/33"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=227837"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/227837\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":227839,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/227837\/revisions\/227839"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/227838"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=227837"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=227837"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=227837"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}