Brazil's Environment Minister Gets Roundly Booed At International Climate Conclave

[hatrack]

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The environment minister of Brazil, where wildfires have been sweeping the Amazon rainforest, was booed at a climate event on Wednesday as celebrities including Leonardo DiCaprio and Ariana Grande joined an international chorus of criticism. Videos of Ricardo Salles being booed by demonstrators as he took to the stage at Latin America and Caribbean Climate Week in the north-eastern city of Salvador circulated widely in Brazil. An opposition senator is planning to seek his impeachment at Brazil’s supreme court.

On Wednesday, the far-right president, Jair Bolsonaro, suggested NGOs were to blame for the surge in rainforest blazes because they lost money under his administration – but provided no evidence for his claim.

Salles flew over fires in the Amazon state of Mato Grosso – an agricultural powerhouse – on Wednesday, and told reporters that some of the fires were “intentional” and others “incidental”.

“It is drier, warmer, with more wind, and this allows a greater spread,” Salles said, according to the O Globo newspaper.
Analysts said the Amazon has become a political problem for Bolsonaro, who wants to develop the rainforest and has told foreigners to mind their own business.

EDIT

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/aug/22/brazilian-minister-booed-at-climate-event-as-outcry-grows-over-amazon-fires

[Mike 03]

1. From the article:

Leading figures in the agribusiness sector, which is key to Bolsonaro’s support and represents nearly a quarter of Brazil’s GDP, warned that outrage over his environmental policies would hurt exports and could scupper a trade deal between the South American trade block Mercosur and the European Union.

“We are paying a very high price,” the former agriculture minister and soybean baron Blairo Maggi told business daily Valor recently. “Agribusiness sectors who know that this [rising deforestation] is going to create problems for market access, for product price, are beginning to mobilise,” Marcello Brito, the president of the Brazilian Agrobusiness Association, told Valor on Wednesday.

Melo, the political scientist, said an unusual “arc of alliance” was forming between agribusiness and environmentalists.

Think I'll write to Unilever and Pepsico today. According to Amazon Watch they are beneficiaries of illegal deforestation. Hypocritically, those companies have been patting themselves on the back for their environmental and "circular economy" achievements.