Who does the Amazon belong to?

Beyond Today

BBC

News

4.6 • 1.1K Ratings

🗓️ 28 August 2019

⏱️ 22 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Wildfires in Brazil’s Amazon rainforest are burning at a record rate. It’s caused global anger and anxiety with more than three million people sharing the hashtag #PrayforAmazonia. Criticism has been directed at the Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro for failing to protect the rainforest and rejecting $22 million of aid money. In this episode we look at who has ownership over the Amazon and other places of environmental importance like the Arctic. We speak to Jon Lee Anderson, a journalist at the New Yorker Magazine who has been visiting indigenous people in Brazil for years. We also hear from BBC journalist Camilla Veras Mota who last week travelled to see the fires in Porto Velho. And Juliana Gragnani from the BBC’s Brazilian service tells us what Brazilians make of all the outside attention and who they blame for the fires. Producer: Duncan Barber. Mixed by Andy Mills. Editor: John Shields.

Transcript

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0:00.0	BBC Sounds, music radio podcasts.
0:04.6	Hello, I'm Tina Dehealey.
0:08.0	Welcome to Beyond Today from BBC Radio 4,
0:11.2	a space to ask one big question about one big story.
0:14.0	Today, who does the Amazon belong to? Wild fires in Brazil's Amazon rainforest are burning at a record rate.
0:45.4	That is a fact and it's causing global anger and anxiety.
0:50.6	Campainers are blaming Brazilian President Jbal Sonaro and arouse kicked off between
0:56.1	him and Emmanuel Macron after the French president called it an international crisis and quoted the teenage activist Greta Tumberg
1:05.2	tweeting, our house is burning.
1:07.8	Bolsonaro has accused him, Emmanuel Macron of colonial interference and said he wasn't going to accept
1:17.1	aid money until he gets an apology.
1:20.1	Well it got us thinking about who gets to decide what happens to the Amazon and in a moment
1:25.7	we'll hear from someone who's been visiting indigenous people there for years.
1:29.7	But first we called up Camilla Veras Motter.
1:33.0	Someone at the London Bureau said,
1:35.0	would you be available to fly tonight to the Amazon?
1:38.0	Yeah, sure.
1:39.0	And then it all started.
1:41.0	Camilla works in the BBC Sao Paulo newsroom.
1:44.7	She flew to Portovelio in the northwest of the country and started driving towards the
1:50.0	fires.
1:51.0	The minute we started a few miles away from Porto Valle, we could already see a lot of
	...

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