Brazil has turned down a $20 million offer from the G7 nations to help fight wildfires in the Amazon, and some leaders showed disdain over the gesture.
Brazilian leaders criticized French Emmanuel Macron, who led the effort for the donation, in slamming the amount of the offer, which some in the environmentalist community have called “chump change.”
“We are thankful, but maybe those resources would be more relevant to reforest Europe,” Onyx Lorenzoni, chief of staff to President Jair Bolsonaro, said.
“Macron cannot even avoid a foreseeable fire in a church that is a world heritage site,” he added, a reference to fire devastating Paris’ historic Notre Dame Cathedral in April.
“What does he intend to teach our country? Brazil is a democratic, free nation that never had colonialist and imperialist practices, as perhaps is the objective of the Frenchman Macron.”
Bolsonaro, whose interactions with Macron have become increasingly personal, chided the French president in a Twitter post.
“We cannot accept that a president, Macron, issues inappropriate and gratuitous attacks against the Amazon,” Bolsonaro wrote. “Nor that he disguises his intentions behind an ‘alliance’ of the G-7 countries to ‘save’ the Amazon as if it were a colony or no man’s land.”
More than 72,000 fires have burned the Amazon this year, which provides about 20 percent of the world’s oxygen. The number is an 84 percent increase over 2018.
Amazon Watch, an environmental watchdog nonprofit, accused the Brazilian government of encouraging farmers there to start fires so it can create pastures for farmland.
