Armed Forces Likely To Be Sent To Fight Amazon Rainforest Wildfires - Brazilian President

Armed Forces Likely to Be Sent to Fight Amazon Rainforest Wildfires - Brazilian President

Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro said Friday that he was considering sending the army to fight raging wildfires in the Amazon rainforest amid growing criticism, media reported

MOSCOW (UrduPoint News / Sputnik - 23rd August, 2019) Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro said Friday that he was considering sending the army to fight raging wildfires in the Amazon rainforest amid growing criticism, media reported.

On Thursday, the president said the government lacked resources to fight the wildfires.

"There is such a tendency, we will decide today in the morning," Bolsonaro was quoted as saying by the Globo broadcaster.

Serious wildfires have been making their way through the Amazon for three weeks now. According to satellite data provided by the Brazilian National Institute for Space Research (INPE), there has been an over 80 percent increase in the number of wildfires between this year and last year, which is an unprecedented rate.

The situation is blamed on the right-wing policies led by Bolsonaro, who encouraged deforestation by loggers and farmers to support national agriculture. Among his disputable decisions was the sacking of Ricardo Galvao, the head of INPE, earlier this month, who accused Bolsonaro's government of increasing the pace of deforestation in the Amazon region.

French President Emmanuel Macron said earlier in the day that Bolsonaro appeared to have lied to him at the Osaka summit about the environmental policies aimed at containing the deforestation. He also urged the G7 leaders on Thursday to discuss the issue at the upcoming summit in the French resort city of Biarritz taking place from August 24-26.