G7 Leaders to Brazil: We Have an Idea

The summit leaders are prepared to support Brazil in battling fires
By Newser Editors and Wire Services
Posted Aug 25, 2019 3:45 PM CDT
G7 Leaders to Brazil: We Have an Idea
Fire consumes an area near Jaci Parana, state of Rondonia, Brazil, Saturday, Aug. 24, 2019.   (AP Photo/Eraldo Peres)

Leaders of the Group of Seven nations said Sunday they are preparing to help Brazil battle fires burning across the Amazon region and repair the damage even as tens of thousands of soldiers got ready to join the fight against blazes that have caused global alarm, the AP reports. French President Emmanuel Macron said the summit leaders were nearing an agreement on how to support Brazil and said the agreement would involve both technical and financial mechanisms "so that we can help them in the most effective way possible." German Chancellor Angela Merkel said her country and others will talk with Brazil about reforestation in the Amazon once fires there have been extinguished. "Of course (this is) Brazilian territory, but we have a question here of the rainforests that is really a global question," she said.

"The lung of our whole Earth is affected, and so we must find common solutions," she added. Pope Francis also added his voice to the chorus of concern over the fires in Brazil, which borders his homeland of Argentina, and urged people to pray so that "they are controlled as quickly as possible." He told a crowd in St. Peter's Square that "we're all worried" about the Amazon fires. He warned that that green "lung of forest is vital for our planet." Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro announced Friday that he would send 44,000 soldiers to help battle the fires that are scattered across his nation's share of the vast Amazon, an overall region 10 times the size of Texas that is seen as a global bulwark against climate change. Only a few hundred troops had been sent so far. (See what Brazil's president has told the world about the fires.)

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