Lula: West should stop dictating Brazil how to manage Amazon forest

We have often implicitly criticized the ‘neocolonial’ attitudes of NGOs, governments and environmental agencies from the West when it comes to the issue of deforestation and development in the South. Their idea that the world’s rainforests and the environment is a ‘universal’ good and must be protected is of course entirely legitimate. But where they go wrong is to think that their decision making process and their discourse on how to manage those forests must be equally ‘universal’.

Developing countries rightly perceive this approach as being slightly neocolonialist and interventionist (earlier post). They feel their sovereignty is being eroded and that they’re being, once again, dictated by the West on which development paradigm to follow (earlier post). When we wrote this, at the Biopact, we have received some angry reactions from these NGOs.

But now, Brazilian President Luis Inacio Lula da Silva, says something quite similar. In a speech in Rio de Janeiro, he has accused developed countries of failing to do enough to fight against global warming. President Lula said it was time for wealthy countries to do more to reduce gas emissions. And he called on them to stop preaching on what to do with the Amazon rainforest.

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