Did U.S. companies and consumers help fuel the fires in the Amazon rainforest?

REVERB is a new documentary series by CBS Reports. Watch “Complicit: The Amazon Fires” in the video player above.

The fires that ravaged the Amazon in the summer of 2019 were not accidental. Most were deliberately fixed clearing land in the rainforest for agricultural purposes. But while Americans and Europeans were outraged by images of the fires in the news and on social media, there is evidence that development on the Amazon is driven in part by its own consumer dollars.

“In the Brazilian Amazon, which is clear where the fires that caught the world’s attention in August are, the main drivers [of deforestation] they’re the agribusiness industry, “Moira Birss, director of the financial campaign for the nonprofit Amazon Watch, told CBS Reports.

Twenty percent of the the rainforest has been lost since the 1970s, when agricultural expansion in the Amazon began as a government program. More than half of this area is currently arable land, cultivated mainly for the export of soybeans and beef. According to the Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies, livestock accounts for 80% of current deforestation rates in the Amazon.

Deforestation has stimulated the construction of highways such as the BR-163, in the state of Para, to carry goods from the rainforest. The BR-163 travels nearly 1,100 miles through an area considered the epicenter of fire and industrialization.

During the rainy season in the fall, a peak season of agricultural productivity, long rows of 18-wheel trucks obstructed the road.

Waterways are also crucial for the transportation of goods from this part of the rainforest. The American company Cargill, a giant of the world grain trade, operates a port near the city of Santarem, where the Amazon and Tapajos rivers converge.

“The government gave the concession to Cargill to build the port,” Socorro Pena, a professor at the local university in Santarem, told CBSN Originals. “Cargill’s presence here divides people’s opinions. Because there are some sectors, politicians, business people, who think Cargill was important for development.”

In a statement to CBS News, a company spokesman said: “Cargill operates at the intersection of agriculture and business, connecting farmers with consumers around the world. The company has recently taken steps to advance its business. commitment to protect forests and promote rural agricultural development in all its production chains “.

The whole development of the region requires a substantial investment. To find out where the money came from, Birss and his colleagues at the Amazon Watch headquarters in Oakland, California, analyzed the four-year financial records to track where they came from.

“We wanted to look at the supply chains and the financial flows between the outside world and the Brazilian Amazon. And what we found was that many of the financial players who are investing in the companies involved in the deforestation of the Brazilian Amazon as well in the product buyers are based in the US and Europe, “Birss said.

The Amazon Watch report revealed that the world’s four largest agribusiness and soybean traders in the world: ADM, Bunge, Cargill and Louis Dreyfus Company, all based in the United States or Europe, operate in the Brazilian Amazon. He found that there are several US and EU financial institutions that offer more than $ 1 billion in credit to these commodity traders, such as CitiBank, Bank of America and JP Morgan Chase. US and European financial institutions such as Morgan Stanley and HSBC are also lending millions to Brazil’s top three beef companies – JBS, Marfrig and Minerva Foods – which together accounted for 80% of meat exports. of the country in 2015.

“I think we are protected from what our money is doing abroad,” said Christian Poirier, director of the Amazon Watch program in Brazil. “That’s what we’re doing today, it’s trying to raise awareness about how we in the North are complicit in what’s happening today in the Amazon. How our money is allowing for the worst human rights abuses and the worst environmental destruction we’ve ever done. in a generation “.

Poirer argued that individuals can have an impact by pressuring asset managers and banks to deviate from any activity that could contribute to the loss of the Amazon rainforest. “They are indebted to us. We are not indebted to them, and in fact we have a voice about how they spend their money, how they spend our money.”

Birss said: “When you are creating funds that ignore the impacts on the climate, indigenous rights, the Amazon rainforest, then yes, you have a direct responsibility and complicity in what we are seeing on earth.”

In:
• Brazil
• Fire