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Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro angrily rejected $22 million international aid offered by the G7 this week as fires burning in the Amazon continue to wreak havoc in the rainforest.
Bolsonaro, who has accused other countries of trying to take Brazil’s sovereignty through investments and aid in the Amazon, seemed to walk back some of his sentiments on Tuesday, accepting an offer of $12 million in aid from Britain and saying he would consider taking the G7 money if French President Emmanuel Macron withdrew “insults” made against him.
Norway, which in August suspended donations to a fund to protect the Amazon in protest over Bolsonaro’s deforestation policies, warned its companies based in the Amazon Tuesday to be careful to not contribute to deforestation. “The Amazon fires are a test case of sorts for how the climate crisis will strain the usefulness of seemingly simple concepts — like national sovereignty,” Quinta Jurecic writes in an op-ed for the New York Times.
Brazilian Environment Minister had earlier told reporters they had welcomed the G7 funding to fight the fires but after a meeting with President Bolsonaro, the Brazilian government changed course https://t.co/uZtoVwfLvR
— RTÉ News (@rtenews) August 27, 2019
For a deeper dive:
New York Times, CNN, Reuters, Washington Post, Bloomberg, Bloomberg, Reuters, New York Times, Quinta Jurecic op-ed, New York Times, Roberto Mangabeira Unger op-ed, Washington Post, Kathleen Parker column, Washington Post, Greg Sargent column
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