The G-7 plan to save the Amazonian rainforest is too little, too late

The G-7 summit in Biarritz has concluded with a prime example of virtue-signalling. In the absence of Donald Trump, the other six leaders pledged to stop the 41,000 fires now burning in the Amazonian regions of Brazil. Emmanuel Macron calls the rainforest “the lungs of the world”. How much were these “lungs” worth to the G-7? Just $20 million in aid, about half the cost of the Biarritz summit.

The French President has also offered unspecified military support “in the coming hours” — but he has become embroiled in a grotesque war of words with his Brazilian opposite number, President Bolsonaro. As a result, the man whose cooperation Macron most needs has denounced him for treating Brazil “as if we were a colony or a no-man’s-land”.

Moreover, the G-7 seems to take a remarkably relaxed attitude to the Amazonian crisis. The initiative must wait a month to be launched at the United Nations General Assembly. By then the fires will mostly have burned themselves out. The “global community” can take credit for a redundant rescue plan, while blaming the Brazilians for the devastation.

The only words for this ludicrous exercise in gesture politics are: too little, too late. The G-7 aid package will do little or nothing to save the Amazonian rainforest, which is genuinely threatened and has lost a fifth of its land area in recent decades.

If Macron really cared about the region, he would not have antagonised Bolsonaro by calling him a “liar” and threatening to veto the Mercosur free trade deal that is vital to Brazil’s economic growth. Bolsonaro responded in typically macho fashion, by contrasting his own glamorous wife with Macron’s much older one. His “extraordinarily disrespectful comments” enraged the Frenchman, who dug himself deeper by suggesting that Brazilian women were “doubtless ashamed” of their president. Brazilians are indeed unhappy about their leader’s failure to protect the rainforest, but most will also share his view that their country’s sovereignty should be respected. A little consideration of Europe’s role in Brazil’s pre- and post-colonial history would not have gone amiss.

It might also have helped if Macron had taken the trouble to visit Brazil and inform himself about what is actually happening there. According to a report in the New York Times, the problem is hardly new: although this year has seen a 35 per cent increase in reported fires, there have been several previous years with many more. (Some of the photographs now being retweeted by celebrities and others are many years old.) Most of the fires now raging are not in virgin rainforest, but in areas that are already largely deforested.

So the reaction is not to panic, but to help Brazil to find long-term solutions to make the rainforest sustainable. In richer countries, deforestation has gone into reverse: according to a 2018 study in the journal Nature, between 1982 and 2016 global tree cover increased by 865,000 square miles.

Brazilians cannot live on the oxygen generated by the rainforest, but they can make a living from agriculture. So they will continue to encroach on this unique ecosystem until they are rich enough to manage without deforestation.

If the world cares about the Amazon, it is going to have to pay for it. The British have set an example, with a £10 million aid programme in addition to the $20 million promised by the other G-7 members. Unlike Macron, Boris Johnson hasn’t picked a fight with Bolsonaro, let alone tried to stop Brazil from trading freely with the West.

Yet the true cost of preserving the rainforest is likely to be orders of magnitude greater than any aid so far mooted. Compared to the real challenge of saving “the lungs of the world”, the G-7’s $20 million is a joke. The Prime Minister says: “I do want to see the tragedy in Brazil tackled properly.” That means working with, not against, the people who actually live there. Once Brexit is done, Boris should be on the next flight to Rio.