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Brazil will reject $22 million emergency aid to be offered by G7 countries to help fight wildfires that are unleashed in the Amazon, according to a senior presidential adviser, who called the movement “imperialist” and said the budget would be used to “reforest Europe.”
World leaders at the G7 summit in Biarritz promised Brazil $22 million on Monday to combat the record number of fires in Brazil, after summit host Macron highlighted the factor as a pressing crisis affecting “the lungs of the planet.”
But global fear of fires has angered Brazil’s far-right president, Jair Bolsonaro, who insists that fires are an internal challenge and accused Macron of adopting a “colonialist mindset” toward his country. On Monday, Bolsonaro’s staff leader Onyx Lorenzoni said the government would not settle for the offer.
“We appreciate [the offer], but those resources are more applicable to reforestation in Europe,” Lorenzoni told Brazilian news site G1.
“Brazil is a democratic and loose country that has never had colonialist and imperialist practices, as the goal of the French Macron.”
READ: Amazon is on fire, Trump still skipped G7 weather meeting
In a barbed rope reference to the chimney that devastated the historic Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris in April, Lorenzoni said: “Macron can’t even a predictable chimney in a World Heritage-listed church. What do you intend to teach our country?”
The comments are the latest save in a sour dispute between Brazil’s skeptical climate leader and his French counterpart that intensified since Macron called for external action opposed to fires in the Amazon last week and threatened to block a draft industrial agreement between the EU and the Southern US countries over Brazil’s insufficient reaction to fires.
Announcing Monday’s offer from the G7, which he said might be loyal to firefighting aircraft and a reforestation program, Macron said he had a good reputation for Brazil’s sovereignty, but that fires in the Amazon were a global problem. As the world’s largest rainforest, the Amazon acts as an important reservoir of carbon to slow global warming.
Although fires in the Amazon occur during the dry season, they have reached a record point this year, spanning 950,000 hectares (2.3 million acres) and causing Brazil to deploy its armed forces to fight fires.
READ: Brazilian warplanes take a look to imbue the burning of the Amazon
“The Amazon rainforest is a theme for the whole planet. We can reforest. We can locate tactics to expand their economic progress that respects the herbal balance,” Macron said Monday.
“But we allow you to destroy everything.”
Although he said last week that Brazil did not have the resources to fight fires, Bolsonaro was angered by attempts by the foreign network to worry about the crisis.
“These countries that send cash here send it for charity. Arrangement… They send it to interfere with our sovereignty,” he said in a Facebook Live broadcast.
His foreign minister, Ernesto Araujo, reiterated that statement on Monday, tweeting that it was “very obvious” that the G7 was seeking to turn fires into a “crisis” made as a pretext for introducing external mechanisms for the Amazon.
The dispute took an ugly, non-public turn on Sunday after Bolsonaro posted a commentary in a photo comparing the appearance of the first French Brigitte Macron with that of Bolsonaro’s wife, Michelle Bolsonaro.
Under a title that read, “Now why is Macron chasing Bolsonaro?” The Brazilian leader replied: “Don’t humiliate the guy. Ha, ha.»
The comment provoked a reaction from Macron at a news convention on Monday, calling Bolsonaro to “make extremely rude comments about my wife.”
“What can I say? It’s unhappy for him, first of all, and for the Brazilians,” he said.
Environmentalists accuse Brazil’s government of having effectively green-lit the crisis with policies favoring development over conservation of the Amazon. Since coming to power in January, Bolsonaro has relaxed the enforcement of existing laws against deforestation, and encouraged mining and farming throughout the Amazon. Scientists say the fires are man-made, mainly caused by ranchers and farmers setting the forest alight to clear land for pasture.
The G7’s emergency fire assistance offer had already been widely rejected by environmental teams as insufficient, and environmentalists noted that the G7 package was unable to combat advertising forces deforesting in the rainforest.
“The $20 million offer is a radical change,” said Richard George, Greenpeace UK’s head of forest.
Coverage: A fireplace burns along the path of the Jacunda National Forest, near the city of Porto Velho in the Vila Nova Samuel region, which is a component of the Brazilian Amazon, on Monday, August 26, 2019. The Group of Seven Nations on Monday promised tens of millions of dollars to Amazonian countries to fight forest chimneys, even as Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro accused rich countries of treating the region as a “colony.” (Photo AP / Eraldo Peres)