Amazon Deforestation

Steve Brine Excerpts

Monday 7th October 2019 Westminster Hall

[Steve Brine (Winchester) (Ind)]

It is pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Bristol East (Kerry McCarthy). I hope it will not be another 10 years before she makes a speech on this subject. I enjoyed her contribution and found it educational, and I thank her for it. I thank the Petitions Committee for holding this debate—as a former Minister who responded to many Petitions Committee debates, it is nice to be on the other side—and the just over 300 of my constituents who signed the petition; I think I know them all. I thank the schoolchildren, from every school I visit and all those that visit me here, who raise this subject with me, and my own two children, who also raise it with me. I also thank the hon. Member for Cambridge (Daniel Zeichner) for setting out the issue so clearly. I do not want to speak for long, and will make three brief points.

First, and personally, as I have droned on to anyone who will listen or who has asked me about environmental policy since I was elected, this is the issue that got me here and opened my eyes as a schoolboy, when I was no older than my eight-year-old son is now. I remember seeing it on television and protesting at the television about it, and my parents saying it was no good telling them—that I should tell someone else and do something about it. That opened my eyes to becoming an activist, and led me to a lifetime of activism. It got me to join Friends of the Earth when I was a young man and ultimately to pursue a career in politics.

Ever since I was adopted as the candidate for Winchester in 2007, I have campaigned relentlessly under the Green Winchester umbrella on many issues, but I have always returned to this subject. As a schoolboy, I wrote articles and held debates on it. I even wrote a poem on it for the school poetry competition, which the swine did not let me win. While the rates of deforestation in the ’80s, when I was at school, and continuing into the ’90s were deeply troubling and led to the television coverage that caught my attention and raised my ire, it seems that more recent years have given cause for hope in the Amazon.

Deforestation has been a concern in the region for some years, but I note in the excellent House of Commons Library briefing for the debate that the New York declaration on deforestation published this year said:

“Brazil lost almost 55 million hectares of tree cover at a rate of 5.7 soccer fields per minute. More than 84 percent of this loss occurred in the…Amazon…an area bigger than Norway.”

However, previous Brazilian Governments have adopted a series of legal and administrative approaches aimed at reducing deforestation, which led to a decline in loss rates. As the declaration reports, the

“Amazon has long been hailed as a success story in global forest conservation efforts. In 2012, Brazil recorded its lowest deforestation rate in the last 20 years.”

It is worth repeating that point, which was made in the opening speech.

Soy was mentioned in a previous contribution. The world’s first two large-scale voluntary commitments to reduce deforestation were based in the Amazon: the 2006 sector-wide soy moratorium and the 2009 company-specific Cattle Brazil: forging public-private co-operation agreements. Nearly 50 companies have endorsed the soy moratorium covering 90% of the soy trade in the Brazilian Amazon, while 18 of the country’s 22 largest meat processors have committed to at least one of the cattle agreements. These approaches were successful, yet trends in the slowing of forest loss have been reversed in recent years. In the period after 2012, deforestation has again increased, no doubt generating more young boys and girls shouting at the television or outside in Westminster today. The reversal of the trend for the slowing of forest loss has been particularly acute this year, and that is what worries us all so much. The progress report of the New York declaration on forests, published in September, states that

“tree cover loss in the Amazon began to rise again in 2016 when it reached 3.7 million hectares. While the rate of loss has fallen in the past two years, it is still higher than it had been since 2005. For the Amazon, deforestation rates continued to rise in the first part of 2019 with an alarming 88 percent increase in June compared to same month the previous year.”

It is worth repeating the point made by my hon. Friend the Member for South West Bedfordshire (Andrew Selous) that deforestation is increasing in Bolivia and Peru, so it is not just a matter of Brazil—but of course it is mainly Brazil.

Secondly, lots of points have been made about indigenous peoples and ecosystems, and I am not going to repeat them. However, I am a former Health Minister and was the cancer care Minister, and it is often said that the Amazon is the world’s largest medicine cabinet. That is a good point. About 25% of all the drugs that are used today derive from rainforest plants. One point that caused one of my shouty TV moments was this: logically, on the balance of probability, if such a high percentage of the things we know about have come from the rainforest, what else is out there? For those who have been involved with fighting cancer, and the loss of the fight, as many times as I and many other people in the Chamber have, it would be wonderful if we could detect more cancers earlier, as is the Government’s ambition. However, as we will not do that for everyone, we will need medicines and drug treatments. For me, the great question is what else is out there.

My third point is about the response, which is obviously what the petitioners are interested in. I understand President Bolsonaro’s view about sovereignty. Of course, international law would be on his side with respect to the sovereignty of his land, but I argue that sovereignty of the planet belongs to us all. Some 40 years after I was raised into political activism of some sort we are still having the same conversation—and, what is worse, the situation is getting more acute and worrying, because deforestation rates seem to be going in the wrong direction again.

I understand the argument that we need to help Brazil to trade its way out of the situation. My hon. Friend the Member for Fylde (Mark Menzies) made his point well, and I listened to him carefully. He has visited the area many times. It is often said that the Amazon basin has a population living in poverty, and that is undoubtedly true, but a lot of deforestation does not stem from poverty. According to the federal Government 32.5% of deforestation in 2016 happened on big farms, and 24.5% on invaded public land, while 30% happened on smallholder agricultural land possessions and 11% inside protected areas that allow for economic activities. So much deforestation, especially on squatted land, is commissioned by people who do not live in the Amazon, including gangs of land speculators and other forms of organised crime. Most of the big farmers and land-grabbers come from São Paulo, Minas Gerais, Paraná and other southern states, attracted by the cheap land and the low level of law enforcement in Brazil. I understand the argument, but it worries me.

As to the response to the petition, at the time of the G20 summit France and Ireland raised the prospect of not ratifying the huge trade deal with South American nations unless Brazil did more to fight fires in the Amazon. President Macron of France said that President Bolsonaro had lied to him about his stance on climate change. Our Prime Minister said:

“The fires ravaging the Amazon rainforest are not only heartbreaking, they are an international crisis. We stand ready to provide whatever help we can to bring them under control and help protect one of Earth’s greatest wonders.”

German Chancellor Merkel called the fire an “acute emergency” that was

“shocking and threatening not only for Brazil and the other affected countries, but also for the whole world”.

I agree with all those statements but, far from arguing that we should withdraw from trade negotiations, I suggest that the deal should explicitly say that countries must commit to tackling climate change. I suggest therefore that all we are asking is that the EU, of which we are still currently a member, should hold Brazil to the commitments in the emerging agreement. That seems perfectly reasonable to me.

Forty years on from the time I described earlier, we are still having the conversation. If we are still having it after another 40 years it will not be a problem but a bit of history—gone for ever. The medicines that we might have found, which might have produced cures for terrible diseases—the diseases that I have spent many hours answering debates on in Westminster Hall, and that affect our constituents—will not be found. If we were to let that happen it seems to me it would be a stain on humanity. The point about sovereignty needs to be balanced alongside that argument. I ask the Minister—he is an excellent Minister and a good friend—to set out the latest position of Her Majesty’s Government on the EU-Mercosur trade deal, from the point of view of a member state and, presumably, from 1 November, a former member state. Where do we stand? What leverage do the Government propose to put on to Brazil and the neighbouring countries that have been mentioned? I will not be here in 40 years but perhaps my son will. I do not want him to be having the same argument that we are.

--- Later in debate ---

[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.