Amazon alight global commons sovereignty

Amazon alight global commons sovereignty

One tangible outcome of the G7 Summit at Biarritz, France, was a $20 million package for tackling fires in the Amazon rainforest, the planet’s largest carbon sink that absorbs two billion tonnes of CO2 a year. Only to have Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro dismiss the offer as modern-day colonialism. The Amazon continues to burn, endangering the lives of 305 indigenous groups, the very farming, to clear land for which many of the fires were started, diverse fauna and flora, and the prospects of containing global warming.

The Amazon tussle highlights the precarious balance that must be achieved between national concerns and international efforts to protect the global commons. Deforestation, particularly burning, peaked in 2004, when the national government launched a satellite monitoring programme to detect and prevent illegal deforestation, depressing clearing rates by more than two-thirds by 2011. Bolsonaro, who, as candidate, railed against these measures as barrier to economic growth, has, as president, reeled in many of these environmental protections. Continued health of the Amazon rainforest calls for a long-term strategy that feeds into a broader regional development plan.

It will require a system that recognises and rewards compliance with the forest code that requires landowners in the Amazon to set aside 80% of their farm for forests, improved funding and stronger compliance mechanism for the UN forests programme that rewards sustainable practices. It will also require, as President Emmanuel Macron of France acknowledged, a change in consumption habits that would lead to lower imports from Brazil. After all, other parts of the world have contributed to the situation that has allowed the Brazilian president to undervalue the Amazon forests.