Amazon Deforestation

Christopher Pincher Excerpts

Monday 7th October 2019 Westminster Hall

[The Minister for Europe and the Americas (Christopher Pincher)]

It is a great pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Roger, and to attend this debate. I congratulate the hon. Member for Cambridge (Daniel Zeichner) on introducing it, and I congratulate all Members who have contributed on what they have said. It may be that we disagree on some of the solutions, but I do not think anyone will disagree with the passion and expertise that has been brought to the Chamber today. I will try to address as many as I can of the points that Members have raised, but to begin I will draw out two points.

The first relates to something that the hon. Member for Bristol East (Kerry McCarthy) said. She mentioned some interesting diversification initiatives, and I am happy to talk to her about some of those. I was on the Energy and Climate Change Committee between 2010 and 2015, and I remember looking at the question of how best to increase awareness and change the choices that drive carbon emissions. We looked at whether it was possible to measure carbon emissions by production or whether it was better to do it by consumption, which Members have mentioned today.

The Committee’s finding was that to go down the route of measuring carbon emissions by consumption and imposing penalties or sanctions or modelling policy around that approach might risk trade conflict, which would hurt not only those who are consuming the goods, possibly in the west, but those who are producing them in low-wage developing economies. That was the view at the time.

I was also struck by the speech of my hon. Friend—I call him a friend—the Member for Winchester (Steve Brine), who gave a sad story of his poetic limitations. In fact, I thought he had gone away a moment ago to write yet another poem. He made reference to what our policy will be in the future, and he made a veiled reference to Mercosur and our attitude to it, which the hon. Members for Dundee West (Chris Law) and for Bishop Auckland (Helen Goodman) also referenced. Mercosur will not be signed any time soon, and by the time it is, we will be out of the European Union and it will not be a trade agreement for us to sign. We will be free to develop and model our own trading agreements and arrangements, and how they look, what they feel like and what they smell like will be a matter for the British Government.

Whether there are environmental elements in those trade deals is still to be determined, but I believe—here, again, I take issue with the hon. Member for Bishop Auckland—that when tariffs are imposed or are not removed, we hurt poor people. Tariffs on food tend to hurt the poorest, so I would support a wide-ranging free trading policy. I discourage her from channelling her inner protectionist and pursuing a policy that would hurt everybody, including her constituents and indigenous communities in the rainforest.

[Steve Brine]

Will the Minister give way?

[Christopher Pincher]

Yes. I have only just begun; I have not even got on to my speech proper, rather like the hon. Member for Cambridge.

[Steve Brine]

I thank the Minister for addressing my point. I will not say this in prose, but obviously we will be outside of being a member state and that trade deal will be signed by the remaining members of the European Union. Were the Government to consider a trade deal with Brazil in the future, does the Minister agree that Brazil’s approach to tackling climate change should be a consideration that would be discussed by his colleagues in the Department for International Trade?

[Christopher Pincher]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for his intervention. He said he will not speak in prose, but I will speak in plain verse: it is for Britain to decide what its trade policy and the models it applies in free trade agreements will be. That is a future decision for the Government to take. I am sure there will be debate on the matter across the House and through Government.

[Matt Western]

Will the Minister give way on that point?

[Christopher Pincher]

I will give way on that point, and then I really have to get into my speech, otherwise we will be here until 7.30 pm.

[Matt Western]

I thank the Minister for giving way specifically on that point. He will know, as will others in the Chamber, that a Trade Bill has been sat on the shelf waiting for more than a year. I sat on the Trade Bill Committee. That Bill included certain protections, certain measures and certain bodies that would have had some say in how we should be constructing our trade deals, whether that was on an ethical basis or through such bodies as the trade remedies authority. Those sorts of things would have come into play. The concern that most people in this Chamber, in Parliament and across the country will have is that those sorts of protections will not be available because the Trade Bill will no longer exist.

[Christopher Pincher]

Assuming that Prorogation takes place tomorrow, the hon. Gentleman is right, but there will be a trade Bill or trade Bills in the future, where I am sure those issues can be re-addressed.

The fires that ravaged the Amazon rainforest over the summer were not only heartbreaking for the people of the region—we have heard some of the stories this afternoon—but were and are a concern for all of us who care about biodiversity and climate. In some places, the devastating surge in fires has followed a sharp rise in deforestation rates this year. As has been pointed out already, deforestation has been on the increase not since 2015, which is what I said in the Chamber—I must correct the record—but since 2012, which of course predates the Bolsonaro Government. It is clear that although the recent fires may have been exacerbated by low rainfall and in some cases by strong winds, a key cause remains the use of fire to clear the rainforest for agriculture.

In Brazil, as we have heard, record numbers of fires have occurred during this year’s dry season, prompting international concern and prompting President Bolsonaro to send more than 40,000 military personnel to the Amazon to bring the fires under control, but the effect remains unclear. It is worth pointing out something that my hon. Friend the Member for South West Bedfordshire (Andrew Selous) alluded to: Bolivia has suffered a similar fate this summer.

Fires since August have destroyed nearly two million hectares of Bolivian forest, including in the Chiquitania, the largest dry forest on Earth. In response, President Morales and opposition parties suspended campaigning activities for their October presidential elections and the Government set up an emergency environmental cabinet in the affected area. Europe, the United States, Russia and Bolivia’s neighbours have provided the most help to bring the fires under control. British experts were among the first to offer assistance and to be deployed. Rains in the past week have begun to extinguish the fires. I mention Bolivia simply to remind all hon. Members that the problem is not simply a Brazilian one, so we cannot lay the blame at the door of the Brazilian Government and President. There are other reasons for the problems that the rainforest faces.

We respect absolutely the sovereignty of the countries of the region over the rainforest, but that sovereignty comes with a responsibility to protect and preserve that precious resource. Although it is regrettable that some Governments initially sought to play down the extent of the problem, we welcome the current and historic leadership shown by the region to address the fires: for example, the creation of the forest codes in Brazil, which legally require landowners in the Brazilian Amazon to maintain 80% of the land as forest. It is also worth pointing out that on 27 August, my right hon. Friend the Foreign Secretary spoke to the Brazilian Foreign Minister, who made it clear that anyone setting fires in the rainforest will be prosecuted. In fact, prosecutions are under way and the penalties for such fires include imprisonment.

Last month at the regional summit hosted by President Duque of Colombia, seven regional leaders signed the Leticia pact for the Amazon. Leaders pledged to improve co-ordination to prevent and manage forest fires, share best practice, and develop initiatives to accelerate reforestation and build sustainable forest economies. We fully support that regionally-led initiative and stand ready to help. The United Kingdom Government are committed to working with Amazon countries to support efforts to protect and restore the Amazon rainforest. Over many years we have partnered with communities, businesses and state and national Governments in Brazil and the wider Amazon region to preserve and restore rainforests for the benefit of people and nature, and for our collective effort to tackle the threat of climate change. Since 2012—this is another point I made in the Chamber during Foreign Office questions—the United Kingdom Government have committed £120 million in international climate finance programmes operating to reduce deforestation in Brazil and a further £70 million in Colombia. That suggests we are doing a lot more than nothing. That investment generates benefits for the local environment, for local communities and for the global climate.

At the G7, my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister—helpfully trailed by the hon. Member for Cambridge —pledged a further £10 million for our international climate finance work to support the longer-term efforts to tackle deforestation in Brazil. That will expand an existing programme that supports the protection and restoration of Brazil’s rainforests, including areas affected by the recent fires.

[Matt Rodda]

I thank the Minister for giving way on that point. It is interesting to hear him tiptoe around some of the issues in this important debate. Given the scale of the challenge that we face across the world, does he feel that £10 million is enough money to deploy on this important issue?

[Christopher Pincher]

We are spending £120 million, not £10 million. The hon. Gentleman is a little ahead of me, but I will mention some rather larger figures as my speech develops.

It is important to build an international coalition around our ambition, so we have worked with Germany and Norway to mobilise $5 billion—there is the big number—between 2015 and 2020 to help reduce tropical deforestation in developing countries. Our support helps to improve the capacity of national and regional Governments to reduce deforestation. It incentivises the protection of forests, conserves a way of life for many unique indigenous groups, and enables businesses and communities to build sustainable economies without destroying tropical rainforests, as my hon. Friend the Member for Fylde (Mark Menzies) eloquently described. He has now gone off to a Delegated Legislation Committee, which is why he is not here for the wind-ups.

One of our programmes supports indigenous Brazil nut collectors to cut out the middleman and sell directly to mainstream buyers. Perhaps that is not such a difficult nut to crack. Furthermore, as a result of our Cerrado programme in Brazil, 38,017 farmers were enrolled onto the rural land registry, representing some 861,000 hectares of land where sustainable practices have now been adopted.

[Wera Hobhouse]

Does the Minister really believe that the young impatient people out there, and the older impatient people, will find what he has said to be a satisfactory answer to all that we have just heard about this year being the most devastating for deforestation in the Amazon? The Government really need to do better. Does the Minister really think that the people out there who have been campaigning, and who will campaign for the next two weeks, will be satisfied with what he has just said?

[Christopher Pincher]

I do not doubt for a moment the sincerity of the people out on the streets of London campaigning about the impact of climate change, but it is better for us to work with economies such as Brazil’s, the ninth largest economy in the world, than to work against them in order to achieve the objectives that we all want, which is to see carbon emissions reduced, the rainforest restored and the poorest people get richer.

The United Kingdom is leading the world in the fight against rising temperatures, reducing our emissions by over 40% since 1990 and legislating for net zero emissions by 2050. We were one of the first major economies to do so. Since 1990, our economy has grown by 66%, so I disagree with those who suggest that there is a conflict between better trade, growth in economies and environmental concerns and calls for action.

[Kerry McCarthy]

Can I ask the Minister how this works in terms of co-operation between Government Departments? The other day in the Chamber, I asked the Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy about the things I highlighted in my speech today and she basically said it was an issue for the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs and not anything to do with her. I said, “It is because it is about climate change and that is your brief.” We also hear reports of Ministers in the Department for International Trade lobbying on behalf of BP at meetings in Brazil. On the other hand, we talk about reducing our fossil fuel use in this country, so there does not seem to be much joined-up working.

[Christopher Pincher]

That charge can be levelled at Governments of all stripes down the ages. Government Departments work together to try to achieve the right result in this arena. For example, BEIS officials are embedded in the COP 25 plan, and in that meeting, to ensure that it is handed over to us smoothly at COP 26, with objectives that can be taken up in the Italian-British conference of the parties.

As we have all alluded to, we cannot tackle this threat to our very existence on our own. Only through international co-operation can we protect our precious planet, and protecting forests is essential if we are to meet our global climate change goals. The Inter- governmental Panel on Climate Change special report on global warming makes it clear that the preservation, restoration and sustainable management of forests is critical for limiting global temperature rises to 1.5 °C above pre-industrial levels.

Our global leadership on climate change helped us to win our bid to host COP 26 next year. We will make telling progress towards carbon-neutral global growth only if we act together as a global community. That means that we need to have all the countries in the Amazon onside. Brazil is particularly important on climate change and deforestation, and has a critical role to play as a partner. We must work together to find solutions, which is why we have an ongoing dialogue with Brazil on these issues at ministerial and official level.

The Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs met last week with Brazil’s Environment Minister, Ricardo Salles, and she stressed the importance of efforts to halt deforestation. The Foreign Secretary has spoken to the Brazilian Foreign Minister, and I have met the Brazilian ambassador, Mr Arruda. We are committed to working with Brazil and other Amazon countries to tackle climate change and deforestation.

[Rachael Maskell]

I am listening carefully to the Minister’s speech, and to the diplomatic channels that the Government want to pursue to influence Brazil’s response to deforestation. However, could the Minister set out exactly what sanction or leverage they will apply? If talk is not enough and Brazil is determined to do something different, it seems that the exercise is quite futile.

[Christopher Pincher]

I am grateful to the hon. Lady for her intervention, but I do not think that talk of sanctions will help the cause. Threatening Brazil will not encourage President Bolsonaro or his Government to talk with us about how we can collaboratively tackle the problem. It is better that we engage sensitively and sensibly than engage in megaphone diplomacy from afar.

We all care deeply about the future of our planet, and we are determined that COP 26 will deliver a greater ambition. It will promote tangible action to deliver the transformational change required by the Paris agreement. We are working closely with Chile to ensure a smooth handover from COP 25, as I described, and we firmly support Chile’s desire for an ambitious, blue COP 25 with a strong focus on oceans.

We remain committed to supporting the countries of the Amazon to tackle deforestation. Those countries will be vital allies in the fight against climate change. Brazil particularly, as home to 60% of the Amazon and 12% of the world’s forests, has a crucial role to play if we are to achieve our climate ambitions at COP 26 and beyond. If future climate negotiations are to succeed, we need to engage with Brazil and her neighbours positively and maintain a constructive dialogue, not shout at them from afar.

At the same time, the United Kingdom Government will continue to raise our concerns about deforestation and to support initiatives that protect the Amazon rainforest. Only through partnership and dialogue will we be able to preserve those precious tropical forests and avert the gravest forecasts of climate change. That is the responsible approach, the approach that will address the passions of the people outside the Chamber as well as within it, and the approach that the Government are determined to take.