Brazil is set to reject an offer made by leaders at the G7 summit, a commitment of $20m to fight record fires tearing through the Amazon rainforest.
French President Emmanuel Macron said the G7 countries would issue $22m (£18m) to “respond to the call of the forest which is burning today in the Amazon”.
The agreement was concluded by leaders of Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, UK, and America in Biarritz, France.
Macron said the funds would be made available "immediately" and that his country would supply concrete support with military within the region among consecutive in a few hours.
There are however speculation that Brazil President Jair Bolsonaro would not accept the donation, saying that his country is treated like a “colony or no-man's land”.
Bolsonaro took to Twitter and described the G7 plan as an attack on the country's sovereignty. He also questioned the intentions behind Macron's push to save the Amazon.
A senior Brazilian official has told Emmanuel Macron to take care of “his home and his colonies” as Brazil rejected the offer to help fight fires in the Amazon.
“We appreciate [the offer], but maybe those resources are more relevant to reforest Europe,” Onyx Lorenzoni, the chief of staff to President Jair Bolsonaro, told the G1 news website.
Record fires are raging in Brazil’s Amazon rainforest, with over 2,500 fires presently burning. They're conjointly emitting large amounts of carbon, with smoke plumes visible thousands of kilometers away.
Environmental activists have drawn links between Bolsonaro’s attitudes towards the environment and therefore the recent surge within the variety of fires in the famous rainforest.
The rainforest is home to 3 million species of plants and animals and one million indigenous individuals.
The devastating loss of biodiversity doesn't just affect brazil. The loss of Amazonian vegetation directly reduces rain across South America and alternative regions of the globe.