Fires in Amazon rainforest are being fuelled by US-China trade war, experts say

Economic opportunities provided by tariff dispute are pushing Brazilian beef and soybean farmers to turn their backs on decades of good practice in region, researchers say

Meanwhile, President Jair Bolsonaro is undermining Brazil’s ‘amazing’ policies on land protection by lowering fines for environmental crimes, ecologist says

Reading Time:5 minutes

Brazil has seen 84,000 fires since the start of the year, of which about 50 per cent were in the Amazon region. Photo: AFP

Published: 6:00am, 31 Aug 2019Updated: 6:54pm, 31 Aug 2019

The overhaul of global supply chains precipitated by the US-China trade war and China’s growing appetite for Brazilian beef are helping fuel the fires raging through Brazil’s Amazon rainforest and other parts of the country, according to researchers and environmentalists.

Brazilian farmers and their backers are looking to take advantage of the greater market access brought about by Chinese tariffs on US soybeans and the Asian country’s rising meat consumption, and are using fire as a tool to clear land for growing crops and grazing cattle, experts say.

As of Thursday, the South American country had seen 84,000 fires since the start of the year, or 75 per cent more than in the same period of 2018, according to figures from the National Institute for Space Research. The blazes in the Amazon, which account for about half of the total, have become the focus of international attention and were a major subject for discussion at the Group of 7 summit in Biarritz last weekend.

The group, which comprises Britain, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the United States and the European Union, agreed to offer US$22 million to help fight the fires, but the aid package was rejected by Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro over a dispute with his French counterpart, Emmanuel Macron.

According to Enrique Ortiz, a tropical ecologist and programme director at the Andes Amazon Fund in Washington, a combination of the loosening of domestic environmental protections and factors linked to the trade war had opened a “Pandora’s box” of issues for Brazil’s environment.