G7 Aid for the Amazon: President Bolsonaro Says Brazil is “Worth Much More”

RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – On Thursday, August 29th, President Jair Bolsonaro spoke again about the G7’s offer of aid to Brazil to help fight fires and deforestation in the Amazon and said that the US$20 (R$83) million is just “pocket change” and that Brazil “is worth much more.”

“Macron [French President] offered handouts. Brazil is worth much more than US$20 million, for God’s sake,” Bolsonaro said in a broadcast on his Facebook page.

On Monday, French President Emmanuel Macron announced that the group of seven of the world’s most industrialized nations provided immediate aid of US$20 million to fight the fires in the world’s largest rainforest.

However, Bolsonaro, who first imposed conditions to accept the grant, such as recognition of the sovereignty of the Brazilian government, now declared that Brazil deserves greater aid, adding that countries in Europe were “buying the country in installments.”

“I had already said that some European countries were buying Brazil in installments. They have given more than US$1 billion in total in the last ten or twelve years. Now, tell me what was done with that money? Point out one acre that has been replanted, any positive action. There is nothing. Most of it was for non-governmental organizations (NGOs) to put into their pockets,” said the president without mentioning the sources of information.

“The problem is not deforestation, the problem is these people (NGOs),” added the head of state, who had already stated the week before that the main suspects of the fires in the Amazon were the NGOs.

Bolsonaro also addressed the separation of indigenous lands in his transmission on Facebook; he said that if all the requested areas were separated, farming and ranching would no longer be workable.

“Approximately 200 indigenous areas are ready to be split. (…) That is, today, fourteen percent of the Brazilian territory is already marked as indigenous land, but if I separate all these areas that are asking for, this number increases to twenty percent. Agriculture, cattle ranching, would simply become infeasible in Brazil,” said Bolsonaro.

The Brazilian Minister of the Institutional Security Cabinet (GSI), Augusto Heleno, who joined Bolsonaro in the transmission, declared that the existing indigenous demarcations should all be reviewed because there are accusations of “fraudulent demarcations” which were “increased in their extent for someone to profit from it.”

Bolsonaro once again stated that he would not delimit any more indigenous lands during his presidential term, which is in its first year.

The number of fires in Brazil has increased by 83 percent this year, compared to the same period in 2018, with 72,953 outbreaks recorded until August 19, with the Amazon being the most affected region.

The Amazon is the largest tropical forest in the world and has the largest registered biodiversity in an area of the planet. It has about 5.5 million square kilometers and includes territories of Brazil, Peru, Colombia, Venezuela, Ecuador, Bolivia, Guyana, Suriname, and French Guyana (an overseas department of France).