Amazon Deforestation

Barry Sheerman Excerpts

Monday 7th October 2019 Westminster Hall

[Daniel Zeichner]

The hon. Lady has provided a short and precise synopsis of my entire speech. I am afraid I will continue with it anyway. She makes an important point: “lost” is perhaps not the right way to put it.

[Mr Barry Sheerman (Huddersfield) (Lab/Co-op)]

Did my hon. Friend listen to the Environment Minister from Brazil on the World Service this morning, and did his heart sink, as mine did, at his failure to answer any of the questions that my hon. Friend is addressing to the Bolsonaro regime?

[Daniel Zeichner]

I did not hear that exchange, but of course it is not uncommon in the political arena for questions not to be directly answered. The point I will develop in my speech is that the failure to act is devastating and dangerous.

Let me return to the 55 million hectares of tree cover, because not everyone knows what that looks like. I am reliably informed that it translates to a loss of 5.7 football pitches per minute. That is something that I can envisage. It is staggering that so many football pitches have been lost in the time that we have been speaking in this debate.

This is not a new problem. We have known about it for some time. Previous Brazilian Governments have tried to reduce deforestation through a number of measures, which have indeed slowed the rate. In 2012 Brazil recorded its lowest deforestation rate of the past 20 years. However, that has been reversed this year. The New Scientist reported in July that more than 3,700 sq km of forest has been deforested this year alone. According to preliminary satellite data, the losses for the first seven months of 2019 are 16% higher than the high of 3,183 sq km in 2016. There was an 88% increase in deforestation in June 2019, compared with June 2018. Those startling and worrying numbers understandably provoke strong and passionate responses from people across the world.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Barry Sheerman (Huddersfield) (Lab/Co-op)]

I am sorry if I repeat anything that another Member has said. It has been a good debate, with excellent contributions, and I will not push too many statistics. I have always been involved in environmental issues. Early in my career, before I got into Parliament, I started the Socialist Environment and Resources Association, and the first branch of Friends of the Earth in England and Wales, in Swansea. I also started a number of organisation such as Urban Minds. So I “do” the environment, in a sense, but I have obviously not done it very effectively. I have been in this place for 40 years and we have not woken up to the fact that we are destroying our fragile planet. We seem to be hell bent on destroying it.

I support most of the petition, but I think that the question is multifaceted. I have worked with Brazilians and other South Americans. I used to co-chair the British-Brazilian all-party parliamentary group, and I started a charity in Peru working on rural and urban development, giving jobs to young people in Lima and the countryside. I know that those are not primitive, backward people. They are highly intelligent and clever. Often they are absolutely let down by bad governance, but they are talented. They have talented scientists. Some of the best technological and scientific innovation takes place in Brazil. It was one of the best competitors in the aircraft industry—a pretty sophisticated industry. Brazil has enormous talent and I sometimes wonder why we do not reach out to that talent more effectively.

I get fed up, and I think the time is coming when the Inter-Parliamentary Union and the Commonwealth Parliamentary Association must wake up to the fact that getting on planes and going to visit and talk to other parliamentarians is something of the past. Some colleagues will not like that, but we must develop new techniques for parliamentarians across the globe to work together. We can do it by clever video conferences and the social media potential is enormous. We should reflect on that as parliamentarians. We often say “It’s the Government.” In an intervention on the very good speech of my hon. Friend the Member for Cambridge (Daniel Zeichner), I mentioned the appearance of the Brazilian Environment Minister on the BBC World Service this morning, which I thought was very poor. However, other major influences are also poor. I work with a number of Brazilian legislators on reducing road deaths in Brazil—a very big killer—so I know about international working.

[Mark Menzies]

What a great and powerful contribution from the hon. Gentleman. I encourage him to renew his interest in not only the IPU, but the all-party parliamentary group on Latin America, because we engage on many of the issues that he has talked about, and with that knowledge and expertise he would make a very valuable new member.

[Mr Sheerman]

I thank the hon. Gentleman very much; I will revisit my level of activity in the group.

When I speak to clever Brazilians, they say to me, “But look what you’ve done to the world. You’ve deforested Europe. At present you are probably despoiling the quality of soil right across Europe and in the UK. You are doing dreadful things that are awful for the environment as well.” When we look at the facts of the matter, we are exporting some of the worst chemicals for people all over the world to put on their land. Indeed, in my own constituency, Syngenta makes weed-killers that it cannot sell in Europe, but it exports them beyond Europe. We should have a conscience about what we are exporting, the soil degradation that we are causing and the fact that we must prove to the Brazilians that we are concerned about climate change worldwide.

I have been inspired by the young people. I have 12 grandchildren. Four of them live in Cambridge and a couple of them have been leaders in the climate change campaign. Indeed, my hon. Friend the Member for Cambridge brought one of my granddaughters, Lola, up to meet the right hon. Member for Surrey Heath (Michael Gove). That shows how active we are on a cross-party basis.

I am inspired because young people have got it. Greta Thunberg, who we invited to this place, has galvanised the level of activity and interest. On the other side, I am inspired by the young people coming out. In Huddersfield the other day, we had a wonderful event in St George’s Square with great speakers. They were young people. It is young people who excite me, because they have got it, and things are changing.

Young people are changing what they eat, so there are more vegans. Two or three years ago, my hon. Friend the Member for Bristol East (Kerry McCarthy) got me to join the all-party parliamentary group on vegetarianism and veganism. I do not know that I am as good at pursuing that as she is, but I helped the group to be quorate on a particular day. The fact of the matter is that young people’s habits—what they eat, what they do, their impact on the environment—are changing fast.

My other inspiration is Professor Steve Jones of University College London, who has produced a book that I have just finished reviewing, “Here Comes the Sun”. If people want to know the real science, he is a Reith lecturer and one of the leading experts in the world. I say to hon. Members, “Read it. It is a hard read, but it tells the unvarnished truth about how we are destroying the climate.” This is not just about the species and the wonderful flora and fauna of the Amazon, but about the fact that the Amazon rainforest helps to regulate the weather globally. When are people going to wake up to the fact that these changes—these fires, these droughts, these floods—are related to climate change?

Of course, if we want to pick on anyone big and say, “It’s your fault, mate,” we should not pick just on the Brazilian leadership. We should look at north America and President Trump. If we want to know what has changed a lot of the attitudes in South America, it is the attitude of the President of the United States, which has changed dramatically from Obama to the present President.

Let us, first, recognise that our delicate, fragile planet is desperately in trouble, and that we will not hand on anything to our children and grandchildren if we do not act now, and act positively. That means sharing technology, science and innovation—including giving it to the Chinese. We do not do anything about the Chinese. The Chinese no longer have any bees. Their agriculture has been so intensive that they have to hand-pollinate, because they have killed all the bees in China. In north America they have killed most of the songbirds.

We must wake up to the urgency of what we face, but not then despair and say, “Oh, it’s all too difficult for us, we can’t tackle this.” We need good science, good technology, sharing of information, sharing of new methods of agriculture and, as my hon. Friend the Member for Bristol East said powerfully, new ways of consuming.

[Matt Western (Warwick and Leamington) (Lab)]

Will my hon. Friend give way?

[Mr Sheerman]

I was just going to finish, but I will give way.

[Matt Western]

My hon. Friend makes a powerful speech. Had I appreciated that he was coming to the end of it, I would have backed off. He made the point about how informed young people are about consumption. He was talking about his grandchildren, and I am sure he is struck by how knowledgeable they are and how that knowledge and information is informing the decisions and choices that they make. That should be inspirational to all of us, as he suggests. Visiting various primary schools, I was amazed that so many children said, “We don’t eat those biscuits, because they have so much palm oil.” We are talking about Brazil and the impact on the rainforests there, but if we look at the rainforest fires in Indonesia, where there is widespread devastation and clearance for palm oil, which goes into so many of our foodstuffs, does he agree that this is a massive, global issue? Obviously we are talking about Brazil, but it is a wider thing across our globe.

[Mr Sheerman]

I am grateful for that helpful intervention. I will reiterate that my Bible has become Professor Steve Jones. Interestingly enough, he has been almost banned by the BBC. He told me that the trouble is that we cannot get a decent debate on climate change on radio or television, because the BBC has this daft idea of balance. Steve cannot get on, as a leading professor and scientist, because apparently they cannot find anyone better qualified than Nigel Lawson to provide balance. He is almost banned from the BBC because he knows too much. What a crazy world! The fact of the matter is that we know what is happening, we know about the science and we know that we have the keys if we share information.

We as parliamentarians are too often lazy. We should not be getting on planes. There is a group of us who are working together on how, deep into the 21st century, we can communicate with other legislators around the world in a positive and supportive way. If anyone would like to join that group with me, I will be holding a meeting this coming Wednesday.