Feds pushed to abandon trade talks with Brazil over Amazon deforestation

“The government cannot be rewarding the destruction of the Amazon,” she said. “It cannot be opening the market to precisely the products that are driving the devastating Amazon fires and ongoing deforestation and destruction that we see, and claim to be responsible about climate change.”

A year ago Canada resisted such calls, saying diversifying its trade partners was critical and that any deal would include environmental protections.

Canada began exploring talks with the Mercosur bloc in 2017 and official negotiations began a year later. Six rounds of talks took place between March 2018 and June 2019, but no talks have occurred since then, said Ryan Nearing, press secretary for International Trade Minister Mary Ng.

“Canada is firmly committed to the principle that trade liberalization and environmental protection should be mutually supportive,” he said in a written statement.

“We recognize that the health of forests in the region is of great importance to the well-being of the planet, and we are seeking an ambitious, comprehensive and enforceable environment chapter within a free-trade agreement with Mercosur.”

Fick said Canada can’t pursue the agreement and claim to be a climate leader.

“Under these circumstances, having some clauses or wording is just not going to cut it,” she said. “The trade deal is fundamentally flawed and it must be abandoned. It must be stopped publicly with a clear message about why.”

Brazil is the world’s biggest exporter of beef, though its meat exports to Canada are limited. In 2018, about $30 million of beef was imported into Canada from Brazil, compared with more than $3 billion in beef exported from Brazil to China.

However in July, Brazil’s Confederation of Agriculture and Livestock said a free-trade agreement with Canada could see meat exports to Canada rise by more than $1.8 billion.

Cattle ranches are blamed for much of the rainforest destruction as forest is cleared to make way for more pastures. Many of the fires are believed to be started illegally by ranchers to clear even more land.

While Brazil’s President Jair Bolsonaro has deployed the military to try to stop the fires, the forest continues to burn, at a rate of about two or three football fields every minute. Bolsonaro was elected on a promise to proceed with rapid development of the Amazon. He has pushed plans to add bridges, highways, dams, mines and logging operations.

The Amazon is one of the most critical habitats in the world, producing as much as one-fifth of the world’s oxygen and storing carbon dioxide that would otherwise cause massive increases to global warming.

Fick said Greenpeace would spend Saturday, a global day of action to protect rain forests, reaching out to multiple Canadian leaders pushing them to back away from further trade with Brazil.

“What is happening in Brazil is at a crisis level and it will have global impacts in terms of what happens in the Amazon,” she said. “The urgency and the scale of what we have, what the potential negative impact would have, of this trade deal are just especially striking.”

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 5, 2020.

Mia Rabson, The Canadian Press

by Canadian Press

Feds pushed to abandon trade talks with Brazil over Amazon deforestation

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