The Amazon is burning. Once more, as in the 1990s, an ‘arc of fire’ threatens planetary sustainability. Food production and consumption take their place at the centre of the climate change emergency, as tropical forest is logged, burned and turned into agricultural cultivation.
In its recent report, the UN and the International Panel of Climate Change estimates that global food production is responsible for 21-37% of ‘anthropogenic emissions’. What lies behind this Anthropogen that treats humankind in general as responsible for the climate change emergency? The destruction of the Amazon is in fact the consequence of a geopolitical conflict, connecting Brazil to China, China to the US – and Brazil, as a member of the Mercosur, to the EU.
When it comes to the climate change crisis, the humble soyabean has a lot to answer for. Not the bean itself, of course, but the human production and consumption related to it, and more particularly the national politics surrounding it. When President Trump declared trade war on China, one of the direct impacts was a Chinese response placing 25% tariffs on soya imports from the USA. At the same time, after the election of President Bolsonaro in Brazil, previous legal limitations on deforestation of the Amazon and expansion into the Cerrado, in significant part for soy production, were relaxed. As the deceptively named Environment Minister, Ricardo Salles, said in a recent interview for the Financial Times (23.08.2019), laws were too restrictive, and commercial development must instead ‘monetize’ the Amazon. Turn fires into dollars.
