Brazil hit back Tuesday at European reluctance to finalize a trade deal between the EU and Mercosur blocs over concerns about Amazon deforestation, saying a French report on the issue was motivated by "protectionist interests."

France said Friday it was opposed to the yet-to-be-ratified deal, after a government-commissioned report blasted the accord as a "missed opportunity" to hold South American countries accountable for protecting the environment.

The report notably analyzed the link between the expansion of beef production in Brazil and deforestation in the Amazon, where environmentalists accuse farmers, ranchers and land speculators of razing trees to make way for crops and pasture.

But Brazil argued the report "showed the true protectionist interests of those who commissioned it."

"Brazil has already shown it is capable of increasing beef, soy and corn production while also reducing deforestation," the foreign and agriculture ministries said in a joint statement.

"From 2004 to 2012, deforestation in the Amazon region fell 83 percent even as agricultural production increased 61 percent.... That is consistent with the historical trend of increasing agricultural production in Brazil resulting from productivity gains compatible with environmental preservation."

The draft deal between the European Union and Mercosur -- Brazil, Argentina, Paraguay and Uruguay -- was agreed in principle last year after two decades of wrangling.

But it still needs to be ratified by all 27 EU member states.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel has also voiced "significant doubts" about the deal, given the extent of deforestation, her spokesman said last month.

The latest volley came as President Jair Bolsonaro said Brazil was the victim of a "brutal disinformation campaign" on Amazon deforestation in his annual address to the United Nations General Assembly.

Bolsonaro, a far-right climate-change skeptic, has faced international criticism over deforestation in the Amazon, which has surged on his watch, according to his own government's figures.

In 2019, Bolsonaro's first year in office, deforestation of the Brazilian Amazon increased 85.3 percent, to a record 10,123 square kilometers (3,910 square miles) -- nearly the size of Lebanon.

So far this year, the rate is down by about five percent, though the number of wildfires has increased 12 percent, to 71,673.

Brazil victim of 'brutal disinformation' on Amazon: Bolsonaro
United Nations, United States (AFP) Sept 22, 2020 - President Jair Bolsonaro downplayed the destruction of the Amazon rainforest in his address to the United Nations General Assembly Tuesday, claiming Brazil was the target of a "brutal" and "shady" international campaign to discredit it.

For the second year in a row, Bolsonaro, a far-right climate-change skeptic, faced criticism as the annual assembly began for presiding over a surge in wildfires in the world's biggest rainforest.

This year, the destruction in the Amazon has been coupled with record fires in the Pantanal, the world's largest tropical wetlands.

But Bolsonaro downplayed the environmental damage and said his government was being unfairly attacked.

"We are victims of a most brutal disinformation campaign about the Amazon and the Brazilian wetlands," he said in a video address to the General Assembly.

"The Brazilian Amazon is known to be immensely rich. That explains the support given by international institutions to this campaign anchored on shady interests coupled with exploitative and unpatriotic Brazilian associations with the purpose of undermining the government and Brazil itself."

He said the fires were being set largely by indigenous farmers using traditional slash-and-burn agriculture.

But ecologists say they are in fact being driven by large-scale agriculture and land speculation in the Amazon region, where farmers and ranchers often clear land by bulldozing trees then burning them.

Bolsonaro has drawn criticism by calling for more land in the Amazon to be opened to agriculture and mining.

Environmental groups were quick to condemn his address.

"Bolsonaro's denialist rhetoric, even as the country burns, is a disgrace to the Brazilian people and isolates Brazil from the world," Greenpeace said in a statement.

The speech was "full of unfounded accusations and scientifically baseless inferences," said Gabriela Yamaguchi of the World Wildlife Fund's Brazil office.

In 2019, Bolsonaro's first year in office, deforestation of the Brazilian Amazon increased 85.3 percent, to a record 10,123 square kilometers (3,900 square miles) -- nearly the size of Lebanon.

So far this year, the rate is down by about five percent, though the number of fires has increased 12 percent, to 71,673.

Meanwhile, in less than nine months, 2020 has already broken the annual record for the number of fires in the Pantanal, with 16,119, burning more than 10 percent of the wetlands.

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France says opposes EU-Mercosur trade deal over deforestation concerns
Paris (AFP) Sept 18, 2020
France remains opposed to a free trade deal in its current proposed form between the EU and South American countries due to "major" concerns about deforestation in the region, the government said on Friday. France is to set out three demands for negotiations to continue, which would crucially include respecting the targets of the Paris Agreement on fighting climate change, the government said. The pact between the European Union and the South American Mercosur free trade bloc - comprising Brazi ... read more