Macron Says the Amazon is Burning and Calls for Urgent Action by the G7

RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – French president Emmanuel Macron used his Twitter account today to position himself on the fires in the Amazon.

Macron, who has previously clashed with president Jair Bolsonaro over environmental issues, referred to the matter as an “international crisis” and called on G7 leaders to address the issue urgently.

“Our house is burning. Literally. The Amazon rainforest, the lung that produces twenty percent of our planet’s oxygen, is on fire. This is an international crisis. Members of the G7, let’s discuss this first-order emergency in two days,” Macron wrote.

The next G7 meeting — which convenes the presidents of the U.S., UK, France, Germany, Italy, Canada, and Japan — will be held this weekend in Biarritz (France).

A few hours later, president Bolsonaro commented on the statement, stating that Macron “evokes a misplaced colonialist mindset of the 21st century.”

“I regret that president Macron seeks to instrumentalize an internal issue of Brazil and other Amazon region countries for personal political gain,” stated Bolsonaro through his Twitter account.

“The sensational tone with which he refers to the Amazon (even appealing to fake photos) does nothing to solve the problem,” added the Brazilian president.

The UN (United Nations) Secretary-General, Antonio Guterres, also voiced his concern on Thursday, August 22nd, about the forest fires in the Amazon and called for the protection of the region’s biodiversity.

“I am deeply concerned about the fires in the Amazon rainforest. In the midst of the global climate crisis, we cannot allow any more damage to this great source of oxygen and biodiversity. The Amazon needs to be protected,” Guterres wrote in his Twitter account.

This morning, president Jair Bolsonaro reiterated that NGOs (Non-Governmental Organizations) are suspected of causing the fires in the Amazon rainforest, but he admitted he has no way of proving this.

“Do you want me to blame the indigenous? Do you want me to blame the Martians? It is, in my opinion, a solid indication that it is these NGO people who have lost their privileges, it is simple”, said the president, before adding: “There is no proof of this. Nobody writes ‘I’m going to burn that.'”

Later in the afternoon, however, Bolsonaro admitted that many of the human-set fires were probably produced by ranchers and loggers trying to clear land.

The critical approach adopted by Emmanuel Macron to analyze the fires in the Amazon is yet another chapter in the tense relationship between the French president and Jair Bolsonaro. The first “crisis” between the politicians began during the G20 meeting, held in June in Osaka, Japan.

Initially, the Brazilian president’s agenda included a bilateral meeting with Macron during the event. However, according to a BBC News Brasil report, the French leader’s delegation had planned only a brief informal conversation.

After a series of misunderstandings, Bolsonaro and Macron met for about twenty minutes, and the Brazilian president invited the Frenchman to come to “visit the Amazon” and would have emphasized that the country would remain a signatory to the Paris Agreement.

After returning from the G20 meeting, Bolsonaro again criticized Germany and France’s positioning on environmental issues and said that Macron and Merkel “had no authority” to discuss the matter with Brazil.

“I invited him (Macron) and Angela Merkel to fly over the Amazon. If they would find one km2 area between Boa Vista and Manaus, then I would agree with them. Now, as I flew over Europe twice, I also told them that I did not find one square kilometer of forest in that region. So they have no authority to come and discuss this issue with us,” said the president.