Amazon Deforestation

Kerry McCarthy Excerpts

Monday 7th October 2019 Westminster Hall

[Kerry McCarthy (Bristol East) (Lab)]

It is always a pleasure to see you in the Chair, Mrs Moon. I do not think it will surprise anyone that I am not going to adopt the same conciliatory tone as the hon. Member for Fylde (Mark Menzies). The situation we face is far too serious to adopt such an approach. As we heard, the Amazon is being wilfully destroyed. It remains the biggest rainforest in the world and a vital check on climate change. The seriousness of the situation cannot be overestimated and, as my hon. Friend the Member for Cambridge (Daniel Zeichner) said, there are people gathered outside this building who want us to take it seriously.

I make no apologies for referring to a debate I led in this Chamber in March 2009 about the impact of livestock on the environment. I read my speech back and I actually think it was rather good, but the Minister’s response was appalling; she went on at some length about how she really liked her mum’s shepherd’s pie. I would like to think we have made progress since then, but although we are talking about the issue more, we certainly have not made as much progress as I hoped we would back then.

Extensive cattle ranching is the primary culprit for deforestation in virtually every Amazon country. It accounts for 80% of current deforestation and is responsible for the release of 340 million tonnes of carbon into the atmosphere every year. That is equivalent to 3.4% of current global emissions. The Brazilian Amazon is home to approximately 200 million head of cattle and is the largest exporter in the world, supplying around a quarter of the global market.

The impact of cattle ranching and deforestation was first publicised by conservationists in the early 1980s—they coined the phrase “the hamburger connection”—but it was fairly small business back then. Government incentives, and improvements in the road and electricity networks and in meat processing facilities, spurred the industry on. Then, with the devaluation of the currency and much of Brazil’s herd being declared free of foot and mouth disease, exports exploded, which led to the current deforestation situation.

Typically, deforestation starts not with animal agriculture but when roads are cut through the forest to open it up for logging and mining. Once the forest along the road has been cleared, commercial or subsistence farmers move in and start growing crops. However, forest soils are too nutrient-poor and fragile to sustain crops for long, so after two or three years, when the soil is depleted, crop yields fall and farmers let the grass grow and move on. That is when the ranchers move in. Little investment is needed to start raising cattle on cheap or abandoned land where grass is already growing, and the returns can be high, at least for a while. However, after five to 10 years, over-grazing and nutrient loss turn rainforest land that was once filled with biodiversity into an eroded wasteland, so ranchers have to look for somewhere else to move on to.

As we heard, deforestation causes irreversible environmental damage if it is not checked in time. The clearing and burning of forests releases billions of tonnes of carbon dioxide and greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. Scientists estimate that deforestation causes roughly a quarter of all human-induced carbon emissions, and then there is the loss of biodiversity. I have not been to Brazil, but I have been to countries such as Belize; the extent to which the rainforest remains undiscovered and unexplored is amazing. There is so much more to be discovered. Forests are home to more than 13 million distinct species, representing more than two thirds of the world’s plants and animals. Obviously, if their habitats are destroyed, many will be at risk of extinction. When the trees are gone, the soil becomes depleted, which often leads to water pollution as the soil gets washed away. That is something for which we in this country must accept responsibility.

[James Gray]

The hon. Lady is making an extremely powerful speech, with which I entirely agree. What she says about the catastrophe in the rainforest, which I have visited many times, is absolutely true. Surely, however, the point of the debate is not so much to say how awful it all is but to ask what we can do about it. The petitioners request trade sanctions against Brazil. The question is how efficacious that would be in persuading the current Government of Brazil to go back to what the Government there were doing only a year ago.

[Kerry McCarthy]

I will get to what I think needs to be done. Sanctions could play a part, but change in consumption habits could play a much bigger part, and that is something we each have some control over.

In their recent “Risky Business” report, WWF and the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds estimate that more than 40% of the UK’s overseas land footprint—nearly 6 million hectares—is in countries that are at high or very high risk of deforestation and of having weak governance and poor labour standards. The more I read about it, the more I see the links between this trade and modern slavery and human rights abuses, with people being displaced from their land, and so on; they are all part and parcel of the same thing.

WWF and the RSPB looked at seven key agricultural commodities imported into the UK: beef and leather, cocoa, palm oil, pulp and paper, rubber, soy, and timber. Of those, beef and leather account for by far the largest proportion of our land footprint overseas, despite the fact that we produce almost 80% of our own beef in the UK and import a lot from Ireland. However, the actual picture is much worse, because we must look at animal feed, too. In the EU, around 90% of soy imports are for livestock feed, so it is not just a case of beef from Argentina or Brazil being bad and British beef being fine, as I often hear people try to argue. Yes, there is a case for pasture-fed livestock—I chair the all-party parliamentary group on agroecology for sustainable food and farming, of which the Pasture-Fed Livestock Association is an active member—but that is not what we are talking about.

Every year, the UK consumes around 3.3 million tonnes of soy, more than 75% of which is related to meat consumption, either as imported animal feed or as soy embedded in imported meat products. We must also consider the feed for chickens that lay eggs, and the feed for dairy herds, as well as soya bean oil, which is the second most widely used vegetable oil after palm oil. This has happened to me many times, but I remember the former farming Minister, Jim Paice, trying to tell me that that was all down to more people eating veggie burgers. I assure people that is not the case. That figure may have gone up in recent years, but I think it is still well below 5%—but yes, it is all the vegetarians’ and vegans’ fault, as usual.

It is interesting to compare what has happened with soy bean oil and palm oil. We import nearly three times as much soy bean oil as palm oil, yet it is palm oil that has tended to receive the attention of environmentalists, probably because of the orangutans. Some 21% of global palm oil production is now certified, whereas soy certified by the Round Table on Responsible Soy or ProTerra accounts for only about 2% of global production.

[Wera Hobhouse]

It is true that we cannot be sanctimonious or hypocritical and tell developing countries what to do, given that we deforested our country in the past, but we now know a lot more about the consequences. The hon. Lady makes a powerful point. Should not we all adopt a responsible, conscious approach to consumption, and promote that politically, rather than saying, “We don’t really need to do anything about it, and it’s not about sanctions”? We must all understand that we are responsible, too.

[Kerry McCarthy]

I think so. There have been some interesting global initiatives or attempts at global initiatives. When I was a shadow Minister in the foreign affairs team, I remember meeting representatives from Ecuador. Yasuni national park in Ecuador is almost as biologically diverse and as amazing as the Galapagos Islands, but oil has been discovered there. The representatives wanted to raise funds from across the world by saying to people, “We are a poor country. We need to exploit our natural resources. We need to get the finances in. If you don’t want us to do that and you think that is appalling, then give us some money not to do it.” I understand that was not a successful approach; they did not raise any money and they ended up having to exploit the natural resources.

The Seychelles issued an ocean bond, saying it would protect its marine areas and not overfish if people gave it money to do that. Although there are wealthy people in the Seychelles, there is a lot of poverty too. That blue bond was successful; we need to look at such initiatives, because it is not just about sanctions, but about working together. As the hon. Lady mentioned, I think it is the wrong approach for us to say, “You cannot exploit what you have got,” when we have exploited everything we have got, and we have been to many other countries and exploited what they have as well, over the centuries.”

Some 77% of UK soy imports come from the high-risk countries of Argentina, Brazil and Paraguay. In its recent report “Money to Burn”, the NGO Global Witness identified the financial institutions behind six key agribusiness companies involved in deforesting climate-critical forests in Brazil, the Congo basin and New Guinea. It revealed that UK-based financial institutions were the second biggest source of financing, providing $6.5 billion, so the UK has a huge responsibility to take action to tackle the source of financing for deforestation. I urge Members to read the report, which is powerful. We must have due diligence regulation across sectors and throughout the supply chain, so people know what their money is being invested in. That would send an important message to businesses, and companies would change the way they operate.

In 2009 I held a debate in this Chamber that was prompted in part by the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation’s report “Livestock’s Long Shadow”, which was released in 2006. It made a compelling case for action to tackle the consequences for the climate and for our natural environment of the ever more industrialised and intensive livestock industry. As I said in that debate, growing animal feed is a supremely inefficient use of land; it takes around 8 kg of grain to produce 1 kg of beef, and there is a huge water footprint, too. It takes almost 21 square metres of land to produce 1 kg of beef, compared with 0.3 square metres to produce 1 kg of vegetables.

Since then, numerous other highly authoritative reports have made the same arguments. They make the headlines and most people agree that something needs to be done, and yet we seem to be no closer to action, apart from people making their own decisions about what they consume.

I finish by expressing my disappointment at the recent report from the Committee on Climate Change on how we reach net zero; it was, frankly, pathetic. At the launch, the chair of the committee said in his opening speech that his least favourite environmentalists were those who expected people to be cold in their homes or to eat disgusting food. I wondered what he meant by disgusting food, but I can guess. This was from the man who fed his daughter, Cordelia, a hamburger at the height of the BSE crisis; I think we know where he is coming from. We were then told that because people could not be expected to eat disgusting food, the recommendation of the Committee on Climate Change was for only a 20% reduction in red meat consumption, which was to be replaced primarily with pork, bacon and poultry rather than plant-based meals.

The Committee on Climate Change was meant to be looking at how deliverable net zero was, primarily from an economic point of view; for example, it was looking at whether we could afford to make the transition to electric vehicles. It also looked at behavioural change and how palatable that would be to the general public. I gather that the behavioural scientist on the committee specialises in shifts in transport, rather than diet, but it took his word on what people would tolerate.

I refer again to the people outside the building today, to people I know and to the people who have contacted me, particularly younger people. I think people are willing to play their part and want to know about the damage their consumption habits cause. It is not just a question of them being able to exercise a choice; the market needs to respond. We need more transparency, so people are educated to make choices, and we need the Government to step in to ensure people are in a position to make those choices.

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[Helen Goodman (Bishop Auckland) (Lab)]

It is very nice to see you in the Chair, Sir Roger. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Cambridge (Daniel Zeichner) on his excellent and comprehensive introduction to the debate.

I am grateful to everyone who initiated and signed the petition, because it relates to a crucial problem for us all. As colleagues have said, it is appropriate that we are debating it while Extinction Rebellion is demonstrating outside. I find it incredible that some people seem to think that the big problem is that Westminster bridge is blocked. The big problem is that the Amazon has been on fire! We need to get these things in proportion.

The Amazon fires over the summer were not accidental or natural. They were lit deliberately, and they destroyed 7,000 square miles of forest. The situation is particularly worrying because once a large amount of forest is destroyed, we will get feedback mechanisms and we will not be able to control what goes on. Avoiding such a feedback mechanism here is one of the most important things that we must do, because every year the Amazon rainforest absorbs a quarter of the carbon dioxide emitted across the whole world. That tells us that fires in the Amazon are not a Brazilian problem or a Latin American problem; they are our problem and everybody’s problem, and we need to own the problem and tackle it in that spirit.

I am disappointed with the Government’s tip-toeing approach, which suggests to me that they do not really understand the seriousness of the problem. I do not know why Government Ministers do not understand it; my constituents do. Di Murphy, who has set up Bishop Auckland Climate Action, understands it. Even 10-year-old Meredith Lambert Sams, who invited me to her primary school last week, understands it.

I went to Cotherstone Primary School on Friday and I was asked a lot of questions by the extremely well-informed children. The most worrying question came from a boy who said to me, “What I don’t understand is why proper action hasn’t been taken already.” I have to say that I was quite stumped by that, because it is not as if we have not known about this situation for 10 years, 20 years or 50 years. How bad does it have to get before we take proper action? There is absolutely no longer any room for complacency whatsoever. We only have 12 years now, and we have to sort this out.

We are really concerned about the Amazon because of the impact it has on the climate, and that is the priority. However, I will just remind people of the Amazon’s biodiversity, because we do not inhabit this globe alone; we do so alongside other species. The Amazon is one of the Earth’s last refuges for jaguars, harpy eagles, pink dolphins, two-toed sloths, pygmy marmosets, saddleback and emperor tamarins, and Goeldi’s monkeys. There are also thousands of birds, butterflies and other insects there. When we think about looking after the planet, we have to do so not only for ourselves, but for all the marvellous range of biodiversity that currently exists.

I am disappointed that the hon. Member for Fylde (Mark Menzies) has left the Chamber. He said that he was very concerned and that we should not implement trade sanctions, because we should have a more collaborative approach with the indigenous people. I think he has not read the petition, which says:

“Indigenous people have called for the EU to impose trade sanctions on Brazil to halt the deforestation because they fear genocide.”

The indigenous people of the Amazon have been living there in a sustainable way for generations. the hon. Member for Winchester (Steve Brine) is right that with modern science we can use the resources of the Amazon in new and creative ways, particularly in medicine. However, we need to be very careful about behaving as if we are the experts and the indigenous people do not know what they are doing, because it is clear that their way of life does not destroy the Amazon in the way that ours does.

My hon. Friend the Member for Bristol East (Kerry McCarthy) made an excellent speech about the exploitation of forests and the urgent need for us to cut our meat consumption. When she and I first discussed the issue three years ago, I thought she was being a bit zany, but I have been totally persuaded that she has a strong case and that we need to think about this issue and act on it, both as individuals and as a nation. We need to move from talking about the situation to taking action, and some actions are particularly pertinent in this context.

The petition calls for trade sanctions, and we have had quite a lot of debate about whether we need to collaborate or have trade sanctions. I am not sure that that is necessarily a choice. Let us look at a connected area of public policy. Of course we put money into universities to finance research and development, but we also have laws to protect people’s intellectual property. We can have a “both/and” approach. We can collaborate, but we need to have sanctions for when things go wrong.

As my hon. Friend did, I will refer to a debate that I initiated a few years ago and a speech that I made at that time. We had a debate before the Paris summit; it was a Backbench Business Committee debate in the main Chamber. Everybody was saying, “Oh, it’s all going to be absolutely marvellous, because everybody’s going to turn up and they will volunteer their contributions, and that’s the way to get everybody on board, and it will all be absolutely marvellous.” I stood up and said—I am afraid that people thought I was zany then—“This is no good, because these commitments are not legally binding, and if they’re not legally binding how can we be confident that we are going to meet the targets that we have to meet? The science is not going to change, and we know how much carbon we must not burn. Therefore, we need to make commitments that will achieve the scientific objective, and they need to be legally binding.” Legally binding commitments mean that there is a penalty for countries that do not abide by them.

We should think about other areas of international law where there are penalties for countries that do not fulfil their obligations, and we should borrow our experience from other areas of international law and—“adapt” is not the right word—use them in the area of the environment. I will give an example. When Russia invaded Ukraine, we imposed sanctions. We were appalled by that invasion, and we thought it was absolutely dreadful. However, when Canada left Kyoto, we took no action whatsoever. Now Bolsonaro is behaving in an utterly irresponsible way, as hon. Members have set out, but we are proposing to take no action. That is not serious, and we need to get serious about this issue. We need to have legally binding international agreements.

One of my asks of the Minister today is this: before Ministers go to Chile for the next round of international negotiations, and while they are considering what the format and structure should be, we need to have a proper and clear legal base. We need to move away from voluntaryism and towards legally binding treaties.

As colleagues have already said, the danger in the Mercosur deal is that if we cut tariffs on beef, we incentivise the destruction of the rainforest by Brazil and the other Latin American countries, so that we become complicit in that destruction. I raised this issue with the Minister in the main Chamber at Foreign Office questions. He said that he did not think I was right about this issue, because he thought that cutting tariffs was good for the poorest people, including farmers on the lowest incomes, in Brazil. I am afraid I do not believe that argument, because we see in this petition that the indigenous people—they are the poorest people in Brazil—want tougher action. We have also seen that with large-scale ranching, large agribusinesses and multinational companies make the profits. The Minister really needs to rethink that argument. We need to line up with France, Ireland and other countries, and say no. A trade deal must be done on the basis that it is consistent with Brazil’s—

[Kerry McCarthy]

My hon. Friend is making a great and passionate speech. According to figures I have seen from the International Labour Organisation, some 62% of slave labour in Brazil is employed in livestock farming-related businesses. As she says, it is not the indigenous people who are benefiting from the trade, and people are being grossly exploited at its heart.

[Helen Goodman]

My hon. Friend makes an excellent point, and she brings me on to my next action. The fact of the matter is—we see this all over the world—that environmental destruction and human rights abuses are often going on in the same places at the same time, all jumbled up. We are seeing that here, too. That is one reason why I hope the Government will take a more sympathetic view than they do currently to the ongoing negotiations in Geneva on the UN binding treaty on transnational corporations and human rights. That treaty would put obligations on transnational corporations to respect human rights, and we could extend that to respecting environmental rights, too.

The No. 1 priority is not to sign a trade deal that will incentivise further destruction of the rainforest, but there are a range of things that the Minister could do. We are discussing the issue here, and the Pope is holding an Amazon synod in Rome. I was struck by what he said in opening the meeting on Saturday; it was appropriate and it set the problem in its context. In Rome, he has groups representing 400 indigenous communities alongside him. He said that we have to stop

“the greed of new forms of colonialism.”

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[Christopher Pincher]

I do not doubt for a moment the sincerity of the people out on the streets of London campaigning about the impact of climate change, but it is better for us to work with economies such as Brazil’s, the ninth largest economy in the world, than to work against them in order to achieve the objectives that we all want, which is to see carbon emissions reduced, the rainforest restored and the poorest people get richer.

The United Kingdom is leading the world in the fight against rising temperatures, reducing our emissions by over 40% since 1990 and legislating for net zero emissions by 2050. We were one of the first major economies to do so. Since 1990, our economy has grown by 66%, so I disagree with those who suggest that there is a conflict between better trade, growth in economies and environmental concerns and calls for action.

[Kerry McCarthy]

Can I ask the Minister how this works in terms of co-operation between Government Departments? The other day in the Chamber, I asked the Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy about the things I highlighted in my speech today and she basically said it was an issue for the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs and not anything to do with her. I said, “It is because it is about climate change and that is your brief.” We also hear reports of Ministers in the Department for International Trade lobbying on behalf of BP at meetings in Brazil. On the other hand, we talk about reducing our fossil fuel use in this country, so there does not seem to be much joined-up working.

[Christopher Pincher]

That charge can be levelled at Governments of all stripes down the ages. Government Departments work together to try to achieve the right result in this arena. For example, BEIS officials are embedded in the COP 25 plan, and in that meeting, to ensure that it is handed over to us smoothly at COP 26, with objectives that can be taken up in the Italian-British conference of the parties.

As we have all alluded to, we cannot tackle this threat to our very existence on our own. Only through international co-operation can we protect our precious planet, and protecting forests is essential if we are to meet our global climate change goals. The Inter- governmental Panel on Climate Change special report on global warming makes it clear that the preservation, restoration and sustainable management of forests is critical for limiting global temperature rises to 1.5 °C above pre-industrial levels.

Our global leadership on climate change helped us to win our bid to host COP 26 next year. We will make telling progress towards carbon-neutral global growth only if we act together as a global community. That means that we need to have all the countries in the Amazon onside. Brazil is particularly important on climate change and deforestation, and has a critical role to play as a partner. We must work together to find solutions, which is why we have an ongoing dialogue with Brazil on these issues at ministerial and official level.

The Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs met last week with Brazil’s Environment Minister, Ricardo Salles, and she stressed the importance of efforts to halt deforestation. The Foreign Secretary has spoken to the Brazilian Foreign Minister, and I have met the Brazilian ambassador, Mr Arruda. We are committed to working with Brazil and other Amazon countries to tackle climate change and deforestation.