Brazil has an incentive to protect the Amazon because the new globalclimate agreement is expected to reward countries for “avoided deforestation,” with cash or credits tradable on the global carbon market. (Emphasis ours. — Ed)
Brazil’s president said Thursday that “gringos” should pay Amazon nations to prevent deforestation,insisting rich Western nations have caused much more past environmentaldestruction than the loggers and farmers who cut and burn trees in theworld’s largest tropical rain forest.
President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silvamade the comments just before an Amazon summit in which delegatessigned a declaration calling for financial help from the industrialworld to halt the deforestation that causes global warming.
“I don’t want any gringo asking us to let an Amazon resident die ofhunger under a tree,” Silva said. “We want to preserve, but they willhave to pay the price for this preservation because we never destroyedour forest like they mowed theirs down a century ago.”
In Brazil, the word “gringo” does not only mean American, but generally refers to anyone from the northern hemisphere.