Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:

To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, what support his Department is giving to indigenous people in the Amazon affected by major forest fires; and what steps his Department is taking to discourage forest burning by logging and farming interests in Brazil.

The increase in forest fires in the Amazon is a tragedy for all of us, but none more so than the indigenous people who call the Amazon their home. These fires are made more likely by deforestation, and that is why we have invested nearly £120 million of our international climate finance in projects to limit deforestation, support local and indigenous people, prevent forest fires and implement the Forest Code in the Amazon, Atlantic Forest and Cerrado biomes.

We will continue to work with Brazilian partners at federal and sub-national levels to help them protect the Amazon, and to support the transition to a low carbon economy. The first phase of Defra’s £24.9 million Low-carbon Agriculture programme, for example, completed in May this year. It reached over 18,500 beneficiaries in the Amazon and Atlantic forest biomes, avoided the clearance of 175,000 hectares of land, reduced carbon emissions by 52% and delivered a seven-fold increase in livestock productivity.