Leaders of the world’s major democracies are due to hold emergency talks this weekend on the wildfires engulfing the Amazon, as international efforts to force Brazil to change its deforestation policies gathered momentum.
As heads of state and government were due to arrive at the G7 in Biarritz on Saturday, France and Ireland threatened to block the Mercosur free-trade agreement between the EU and South American nations if the government of Jair Bolsonaro does not stop the deforestation of the Amazon, which experts say has fuelled the fires. Other EU members were under pressure to walk away from the Mercosur (Southern Common Market) deal, which is already unpopular among European farmers.
The Irish taoiseach, Leo Varadkar, who was first to call the Mercosur deal into question on Friday, said Bolsonaro’s attempt to blame the fires on environmental groups was “Orwellian”.
On Friday evening, Bolsonaro used a TV speech to profess “profound love and respect” for the Amazon but played down both the significance of the fires as well as his administration’s responsibility for them.
The Finnish government, which currently chairs the EU, called on member states to consider more trade restrictions. The country’s finance minister, Mika Lintila, said he “condemns the destruction of the Amazon and calls for Finland and the EU to urgently look into the possibility of banning Brazilian beef imports”.
Provisionally agreed in June 2019 after some 20 years of negotiating, the EU has signed a trade agreement with the Mercosur nations - Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay, and Uruguay. The agreement will cover a combined population of 780 million, making it one of the largest ever trading bloc arrangements by size.
EU's exports to the Mercosur countries totalled €45bn in 2018. Goods travelling in the other direction amounted to €42.6bn in 2018. The EU is the biggest foreign investor in the region - €381bn in 2017. Trade in services between the two regions was valued at €34bn in 2017.
Critics of the deal have said that it has taken too long to sign, and that with the climate emergency, a deal that will facilitate the easier shipping of animal products across hemispheres conflicts with the EU's stated aim to reduce greenhouse emissions.
As a result of the deal, EU companies will save €4bn worth of duties per year. Since 2014, EU trade agreements with 15 countries have entered into force, notably with Canada and Japan.
Boris Johnson, who will be attending the G7 summit for the first time as prime minister, has said he was “deeply concerned” by the Amazon conflagration, but was under pressure from Jeremy Corbyn to support punitive measures against Bolsonaro, who the Labour leader said “has allowed and indeed encouraged these fires to take place”.
The public backlash also escalated on Friday. In Brazil, protests against the government’s environmental policies were planned in 40 cities on Friday, and there were demonstrations outside Brazilian embassies and consulates in several European capitals.
“This country made a Herculean effort to reduce deforestation in the Amazon and now we are seeing everything being taken apart,” tweeted Brazil’s former environment minster Marina Silva. “Brazil had stopped being a villain and it is now going back to being a pariah. We must stop this insanity,” she added.
France accused Bolsonaro of lying to its president, Emmanuel Macron, about his commitments on combating the climate emergency, and so the country would no longer support the Mercosur deal with Brazil, Argentina, Uruguay and Paraguay. The deal has taken two decades to negotiate but has yet to be ratified.
Macron said the wildfires constituted an international crisis and vowed to push the issue to the top of the agenda at the G7 summit, which begins on Saturday night in Biarritz. In a interview on Friday night he said the Amazon needed better management to end the “ecocide” that is going on in the rainforest. In further criticism of Bolsonaro, he told French news website Konbini: “We need to find a good governance of the Amazon. This means we need to involve NGOs and local populations much more than we do now, and we need to stop the industrial deforestation that is going on everywhere.”
The German chancellor, Angela Merkel, supported the decision to discuss the issue at the G7. “The extent of the fires in the Amazon area is shocking and threatening, not only for Brazil and the other affected countries, but also for the whole world,” Merkel’s spokesman, Steffen Seibert, told journalists in Berlin on Friday.
A German government spokesman pointed out that Mercosur included strict and binding commitments on the environment and sustainable development. But he did not say what action Germany would take in response to Brazilian violations of those commitments.
Bolsonaro authorised the use of the military to tackle the blazes on Friday. From Saturday, Brazilian forces will be deployed to affected regions in the Amazon to assist in putting out fires for a month, according to a presidential decree. As the crisis deepened, it was reported he would also fly to the region.
He has painted the barrage of criticism as part of a foreign conspiracy that might eventually be used to justify a foreign “intervention” in the Amazon. “This happens all over the world, it’s not just in Brazil,” he said of the fires.
But in seeking to bringing broad international pressure to bear on Brazil, the French president is likely to face resistance from Donald Trump, a staunch ally of the Brazilian far-right leader Trump also has a long history of climate change denial himself. Trump tweeted late on Friday night that he had spoken to Bolsonaro and told him “we stand ready to assist” with fighting the fires. The tweet also referred to the two countries’ “exciting trade prospects”.
The US has insisted the first working session of the summit focus on boosting economic growth. “We think the global economy is one of the core features of the G7 and really should stay the focus,” a senior administration official said. “The president’s message will be pro-jobs, pro-growth and currency stability.”
Another US official claimed: “We have a winning record on the environment, but we don’t think that environmental protection needs to necessarily cost economic growth or energy security and dominance.”
US emissions fell 14% from 2005 to 2017, but began to rise sharply again in 2018. Trump, who in the past described the climate emergency as a “Chinese hoax”, has refused to sign a joint G7 policy statement with his fellow leaders for the past two summits, and the French are not expecting him to support a common position this year.
Macron is also expected to clash with Trump over policy on Iran, and the US decision last year to walk out of a multilateral agreement on containing the Iranian nuclear programme. The French president is hoping to use the Biarritz summit to defuse dangerous tensions in the Persian Gulf, driven by the US attempt to strangle the Iranian economy, and Iranian reprisals aimed at harassing oil tankers passing through the strait of Hormuz.
Macron met Iran’s foreign minister, Mohammad Javad Zarif, in Paris on the eve of the Biarritz summit in an effort to find common ground to restart dialogue between Washington and Tehran. Zarif told a French press agency that he thought Macron’s suggestions went “in the right direction” but did not give details. Trump has said that he is willing to restart talks but has refused so far as to return to the nuclear agreement or relax the US-led oil embargo on Iran.
There are also likely to be tough talks between Macron and Trump on trade, and particularly over a 3% French tax on digital services, which the White House alleges disproportionately hurts US companies. Trump has threatened to retaliate with a tariff on French wine.
“President Trump certainly wants to see a global solution to that issue, which he’ll keep pushing, but he is also not going to back down in the face of countries like France going after our industry,” a senior administration official said.
Trump’s position will be bolstered by arrival of Johnson, who the president will meet in Biarritz for the first time as prime minister, and who he sees as another natural ally on the hard right.
Johnson has, however, stuck so far to the common European position in support of the Iran nuclear deal. The Biarritz summit will be the first major test of where the new prime minister seeks to position his government in the transatlantic divide between the US and Europe as Brexit looms.
In part to dilute the impact of policy division within the G7, Macron has invited other world leaders, from South Africa, Egypt and the Sahel, as well as India, Australia, Chile and Spain to the summit, to talk about global inequalities, climate change and biodiversity.
Likely flashpoints at the G7
Amazon and climate crisis
France, with emphatic Canadian and German support, is putting the ecological crisis in the Amazon at the top of the G7 agenda, but Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro is likely to count on Donald Trump for support. They are allies on the far-right, and fellow climate crisis deniers.
Iran
Emmanuel Macron has taken the lead in trying to halt the drift towards conflict in the Persian Gulf, dispatching aides to Tehran and meeting the Iranian foreign minister in Paris. Macron will try to persuade Trump to relax the US campaign of maximum economic pressure in a way that the US president will be able to claim is his own diplomatic breakthrough. An obstacle may be the presence in Biarritz of Trump’s ultra-hawk national security adviser, John Bolton.
Trade
Donald Trump will arrive in Biarritz furious at China, and looking for support in presenting a united front to Beijing. But he has his own battles to fight with Europe, and has threatened to impose tariffs on French wine in retaliation for a French tax on digital services which affects US tech giants. US tariffs on Airbus and vehicles are also hanging over transatlantic relations.
