Amazon Deforestation

James Gray Excerpts

Monday 7th October 2019 Westminster Hall

[James Gray (North Wiltshire) (Con)]

I congratulate the hon. Gentleman on securing this extremely important debate, and I apologise for missing the first few moments of his speech. He is of course right to call attention to the vast increase in deforestation that has occurred this year, but it is also right to put that in the context—he mentioned this in passing—of the very significant reduction in deforestation. As recently as 2004, it was 10,500 square miles a year. Last year, it was 4,000 square miles. This year, as he correctly mentioned, it has gone back up again. It is right to say that the Brazilian Government have been doing their best, albeit this year there seems to have been an extremely worrying reversal.

[Daniel Zeichner]

The hon. Gentleman makes an important point: there has been progress. The problem is that something has happened. That is what I will come on to.

The threat of natural loss as a consequence of these changes is very real and is under way, but the political situation that underpins this issue deserves careful and considered attention because, as the hon. Member for North Wiltshire (James Gray) pointed out, something has changed. It is hard not to conclude that the environmental damage is a direct consequence of a change in policy direction and political attitudes.

That brings me to President Bolsonaro—clearly a controversial figure, although by no means the only controversial figure on the world stage at the moment—whose attitude to climate change is worth highlighting. Back in December 2018, at the 24th conference of the parties to the United Nations framework convention on climate change, the Brazilian Government promised that their carbon emissions would decrease by 37% by 2025, and by 43% by 2030, compared with 2005 levels. However, since President Bolsonaro took office in January there has been a clear change. He is widely considered to be sceptical of actions to curb climate change, and in his election campaign he said he would take Brazil out of the Paris climate change accord—a note, I fear, from the Trump playbook. He has back-peddled a little and has argued that he may not do that so long as Brazil’s control over the Amazon remains intact. I have to say that I do not think these are issues to be negotiated. We should all be working to preserve such an important part of our environment.

This summer the world watched on with huge anxiety as forest fires burned in the Amazon, with many attributing blame to forest clearance policies. The Rainforest Alliance says that satellite data show an 84% increase in fires compared with the same period in 2018. The Brazilian Government deny a causal link, but the disagreement has led to fierce international controversy. It was recently reported that at the UN

“Bolsonaro…launched a cantankerous and conspiratorial defence of his environmental record, blaming Emmanuel Macron and the ‘deceitful’ media for hyping this year’s fires in the Amazon. In a combative 30-minute address to the UN general assembly, Bolsonaro denied—contrary to the evidence—that the world’s largest rainforest was ‘being devastated or consumed by fire, as the media deceitfully says’.”

Similarly, The Guardian has reported that

“Bolsonaro is set to unveil draft legislation that would allow commercial mining in indigenous territories, something currently outlawed, despite overwhelming opposition from voters.”

Clearly there are differences of view, but I find it hard not to conclude that the Brazilian President’s pro-development agenda is having a clear and dangerous impact, and that the clearing of the rainforest will be used to allow further development of mining and agriculture.

If we conclude that we all have an interest in this issue because of the impact on the global climate, the question becomes, “What do we do?” The petition calls for trade sanctions, a measure that the Government have not adopted or advocated so far. The Government state in their response to the petition:

“The United Kingdom shares concerns about deforestation in the Amazon rainforest, and the severe impact on the climate, biodiversity and livelihoods. However, key to tackling these issues is to work with Brazil to find solutions rather than imposing sanctions.”

I am afraid that I must characterise that as a “do nothing” response, or rather a “do a tiny little bit to maybe give us some cover” response, because the Government also stated:

“In response to the recent forest fires, the Prime Minister pledged a further £10 million at the G7 summit on 25 August. This contribution is an expansion of an existing project: Partnerships for Forests.”

The rainforest is burning and the Prime Minister has offered a water pistol—maybe he could have sent an unused water cannon.

Remember the scale of the challenge that we face. The Government’s actions hardly equate to the “rapid”, “unprecedented” and “far-reaching” transitions that the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change called for in its report last year.

--- Later in debate ---

[Kerry McCarthy (Bristol East) (Lab)]

It is always a pleasure to see you in the Chair, Mrs Moon. I do not think it will surprise anyone that I am not going to adopt the same conciliatory tone as the hon. Member for Fylde (Mark Menzies). The situation we face is far too serious to adopt such an approach. As we heard, the Amazon is being wilfully destroyed. It remains the biggest rainforest in the world and a vital check on climate change. The seriousness of the situation cannot be overestimated and, as my hon. Friend the Member for Cambridge (Daniel Zeichner) said, there are people gathered outside this building who want us to take it seriously.

I make no apologies for referring to a debate I led in this Chamber in March 2009 about the impact of livestock on the environment. I read my speech back and I actually think it was rather good, but the Minister’s response was appalling; she went on at some length about how she really liked her mum’s shepherd’s pie. I would like to think we have made progress since then, but although we are talking about the issue more, we certainly have not made as much progress as I hoped we would back then.

Extensive cattle ranching is the primary culprit for deforestation in virtually every Amazon country. It accounts for 80% of current deforestation and is responsible for the release of 340 million tonnes of carbon into the atmosphere every year. That is equivalent to 3.4% of current global emissions. The Brazilian Amazon is home to approximately 200 million head of cattle and is the largest exporter in the world, supplying around a quarter of the global market.

The impact of cattle ranching and deforestation was first publicised by conservationists in the early 1980s—they coined the phrase “the hamburger connection”—but it was fairly small business back then. Government incentives, and improvements in the road and electricity networks and in meat processing facilities, spurred the industry on. Then, with the devaluation of the currency and much of Brazil’s herd being declared free of foot and mouth disease, exports exploded, which led to the current deforestation situation.

Typically, deforestation starts not with animal agriculture but when roads are cut through the forest to open it up for logging and mining. Once the forest along the road has been cleared, commercial or subsistence farmers move in and start growing crops. However, forest soils are too nutrient-poor and fragile to sustain crops for long, so after two or three years, when the soil is depleted, crop yields fall and farmers let the grass grow and move on. That is when the ranchers move in. Little investment is needed to start raising cattle on cheap or abandoned land where grass is already growing, and the returns can be high, at least for a while. However, after five to 10 years, over-grazing and nutrient loss turn rainforest land that was once filled with biodiversity into an eroded wasteland, so ranchers have to look for somewhere else to move on to.

As we heard, deforestation causes irreversible environmental damage if it is not checked in time. The clearing and burning of forests releases billions of tonnes of carbon dioxide and greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. Scientists estimate that deforestation causes roughly a quarter of all human-induced carbon emissions, and then there is the loss of biodiversity. I have not been to Brazil, but I have been to countries such as Belize; the extent to which the rainforest remains undiscovered and unexplored is amazing. There is so much more to be discovered. Forests are home to more than 13 million distinct species, representing more than two thirds of the world’s plants and animals. Obviously, if their habitats are destroyed, many will be at risk of extinction. When the trees are gone, the soil becomes depleted, which often leads to water pollution as the soil gets washed away. That is something for which we in this country must accept responsibility.

[James Gray]

The hon. Lady is making an extremely powerful speech, with which I entirely agree. What she says about the catastrophe in the rainforest, which I have visited many times, is absolutely true. Surely, however, the point of the debate is not so much to say how awful it all is but to ask what we can do about it. The petitioners request trade sanctions against Brazil. The question is how efficacious that would be in persuading the current Government of Brazil to go back to what the Government there were doing only a year ago.

[Kerry McCarthy]

I will get to what I think needs to be done. Sanctions could play a part, but change in consumption habits could play a much bigger part, and that is something we each have some control over.

In their recent “Risky Business” report, WWF and the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds estimate that more than 40% of the UK’s overseas land footprint—nearly 6 million hectares—is in countries that are at high or very high risk of deforestation and of having weak governance and poor labour standards. The more I read about it, the more I see the links between this trade and modern slavery and human rights abuses, with people being displaced from their land, and so on; they are all part and parcel of the same thing.

WWF and the RSPB looked at seven key agricultural commodities imported into the UK: beef and leather, cocoa, palm oil, pulp and paper, rubber, soy, and timber. Of those, beef and leather account for by far the largest proportion of our land footprint overseas, despite the fact that we produce almost 80% of our own beef in the UK and import a lot from Ireland. However, the actual picture is much worse, because we must look at animal feed, too. In the EU, around 90% of soy imports are for livestock feed, so it is not just a case of beef from Argentina or Brazil being bad and British beef being fine, as I often hear people try to argue. Yes, there is a case for pasture-fed livestock—I chair the all-party parliamentary group on agroecology for sustainable food and farming, of which the Pasture-Fed Livestock Association is an active member—but that is not what we are talking about.

Every year, the UK consumes around 3.3 million tonnes of soy, more than 75% of which is related to meat consumption, either as imported animal feed or as soy embedded in imported meat products. We must also consider the feed for chickens that lay eggs, and the feed for dairy herds, as well as soya bean oil, which is the second most widely used vegetable oil after palm oil. This has happened to me many times, but I remember the former farming Minister, Jim Paice, trying to tell me that that was all down to more people eating veggie burgers. I assure people that is not the case. That figure may have gone up in recent years, but I think it is still well below 5%—but yes, it is all the vegetarians’ and vegans’ fault, as usual.

It is interesting to compare what has happened with soy bean oil and palm oil. We import nearly three times as much soy bean oil as palm oil, yet it is palm oil that has tended to receive the attention of environmentalists, probably because of the orangutans. Some 21% of global palm oil production is now certified, whereas soy certified by the Round Table on Responsible Soy or ProTerra accounts for only about 2% of global production.