Brazil’s government has said it will reject an offer of aid worth millions of dollars from G7 countries to help fight raging fires in the Amazon rainforest.
French President Emmanuel Macron said on Monday during a G7 summit in Biarritz that the group – comprising the US, Japan, Germany, France, Italy, Britain and Canada – would donate $22m to help tackle the blazes. Separately, Britain and Canada also pledged $12m and $11m in aid respectively.
Macron said the funds would be made available immediately and that France would also offer military support in the region.
Brazilian officials gave no official reason for rejecting the group’s offer, while it was not immediately clear if Britain and Canada’s offers of aid had also been declined, but President Jair Bolsonaro had earlier accused Macron of treating Brazil as if it were a colony.
Onyx Lorenzoni, Bolsonaro’s chief of staff, suggested on Monday to Brazil’s Globo news website that “perhaps these resources are more relevant to reforesting Europe”.
“Macron cannot even avoid a predictable fire in a church that is part of the world’s heritage, and he wants to give us lessons for our country?” Lorenzoni added, referring to the fire in April that devastated Paris’ Notre-Dame cathedral.
“What does he intend to teach our country?” he questioned.
Brazilian Environment Minister Ricardo Salles had earlier told reporters they had welcomed the G7 funding to fight the fires that have swept across the Brazilian Amazon in record numbers this year and prompted the deployment of the army.
But after a meeting between Bolsonaro and his ministers, the Brazilian government changed course.
