Canada pushing for Amazon protections in free-trade talks with Brazil

A fire burns along the road to Jacunda National Forest, near the city of Porto Velho in the Vila Nova Samuel region which is part of Brazil’s Amazon, on Monday, Aug. 26, 2019. Photo by The Associated Press/Eraldo Peres

Canada is forging ahead with trade talks with the South American Mercosur trading bloc, hoping to push Brazil to better protect the critical Amazon rainforest, a government spokesman said Tuesday.

The talks are continuing despite Brazil’s rejection of international funding to help fight fires in the Amazon, apparently over a personal spat with France’s President Emmanuel Macron.

Canada began trade negotiations last year with the four full members of the Mercosur group — Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay and Uruguay. There have been six rounds of talks, most recently in June.

Environment groups last week asked the federal government to abandon those talks in a bid to force Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro to end the rapid deforestation experts say is partly to blame for the record number of fires burning in the Amazon this year.

Tuesday, NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh echoed them, saying in a statement that Prime Minister Justin Trudeau “is putting the interests of rich corporations ahead of the fight against climate change by continuing free-trade negotiations with President Bolsonaro.”

A spokesman for International Trade Minister Jim Carr said the talks will continue “because we are committed to diversifying our trading partners” but that trade is not the only thing on the agenda.

“As part of negotiations, Canada is seeking environmental provisions that would be more ambitious than the current (World Trade Organization) guidelines, and include sustainable forest management and combating illegal logging and related trade,” said Michael Jones. MORE

What Satellite Imagery Tells Us About the Amazon Rain Forest Fires

Scientists studying satellite image data from the fires in the Amazon rain forest said that most of the fires are burning on agricultural land where the forest had already been cleared.

Most of the fires were likely set by farmers preparing the land for next year’s planting, a common agricultural practice, said the scientists from the University of Maryland.

Satellite images like the one below show smoke plumes from fires emanating from agricultural areas.

Maxar Technologies

The majority of the agricultural land currently in use in Brazil’s Amazon region was created through years of deforestation.

“Most of this is land use that have replaced rain forest,” said Matthew Hansen, who is a co-leader of the Global Land Analysis and Discovery laboratory at the University of Maryland.

“Brazil has turned certain states like Mato Grosso into Iowa,” said Mr. Hanson, referring to the Brazilian state on the southern edge of the Amazon region. “You’ve got rain forest, and then there’s just an ocean of soybean.”

The grid of maps show the month-by-month pattern of fires across the Amazon rain forest in Brazil each year since 2001. The increase in fires every August to October coincides with the season when farmers begin planting soybean and corn.

These maps were created using current and historical data from two NASA satellites, Terra and Aqua, which can detect the infrared radiation emitted by fires.

Comparing the area that burned in August this year to an average of the areas burned during the same month in the previous five years illustrate part of the reason why this year’s fires have garnered so much attention.

Scientists at Brazil’s National Institute of Space Research calculated that there were 35 percent more fires so far this year than in the average of the last eight years. MORE

 

Will Trudeau Rein in the Export Development Bank? Or Disappoint Once Again?

Canadians should be shamed by billions in backing for dubious corporations and projects.

While other funds are divesting fossil fuel shares, and the Trudeau government talks of a climate emergency, Export Development Canada has loaned billions to oil sands corporations. Photo by jasonwoodhead23, Creative Commons licensed.

Canadians have a big decision to make this fall. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is in deep trouble and desperately trying to court progressive voters, who are understandably not in an amorous mood.

Displays of high hypocrisy such as approving a bitumen export pipeline the day after declaring a climate emergency, or glibly throwing electoral reformunder the bus are not easily forgotten by those who care about such things.

Beyond these obvious blights on the Liberal brand, there is another boat anchor that could help drag Trudeau into the depths of electoral oblivion: Export Development Canada.

EDC is a Crown corporation tasked with promoting international trade by supporting Canadian and foreign companies through loans and insurance.

One of the largest such government credit agencies in the world, EDC currently has about $55 billion in outstanding loans to Canadian and foreign corporations. While EDC loans out its own funds, those loans are backstopped by Canadian taxpayers, and hopefully are therefore being used to project Canadian values around the world.

EDC claims to be a good corporate citizen. However, reality and political rhetoric are like salad dressing — spontaneous separation may occur without constant agitation. The Crown corporation has a record of supporting some dubious people and projects.

Political enthusiasts will recall that just as the toxic SNC-Lavalin scandal was beginning to subside, a whistleblower alleged that EDC had provided loans to the Quebec company that may have been used to bribe officials in Angola and elsewhere. The whistleblower told the CBC that it was an “open secret” within the company that funds earmarked for bribes were listed as “technical fees” of up to 10 per cent of total budget in proposals to EDC. MORE

Jens Wieting and Torrance Coste: Logging B.C.’s ancient forests adds to extinctions

Governments everywhere must safeguard ancient forests, their webs of life and the life support systems upon which we all depend.

Old-growth western red cedar, western hemlock and Pacific silver fir in the Capilano River watershed near North Vancouver. AMANDA STAN / SUN

Human destruction and disruption of the natural world have sped up the natural rate of species extinction by at least 100 times. A recent study found that globally billions of populations of mammals, birds, reptiles and amphibians have been lost in recent decades with habitat destruction as the leading cause, now exacerbated by global warming. They referred to the massive loss of wildlife as “biological annihilation.”

Here in “Super, Natural B.C.,” we often celebrate our biological richness and spectacular landscapes. Many of us hang on to the belief that things are not so bad in our neck of the woods, despite the fact that 1,900 B.C. species are at risk of disappearing.

For a reality check, consider this: Vancouver Island’s remaining intact rainforest is being destroyed three times faster than the remaining Amazon rainforest in Brazil. MORE