A Swedish-born tycoon who acts as a deforestation adviser to British Prime Minister Gordon Brown has stirred up controversy in Brazil for reportedly claiming all the Amazon could be bought for US$50 billion.
Johan Eliasch, the 46-year-old boss of the Head sports equipment company, is under investigation by Brazilian police and intelligence services for the alleged comments and for 160,000 hectares of Amazon forest he is believed to have bought, the O Globo newspaper reported on Monday.
He reportedly made the assertions to stimulate land acquisition as part of his role as director of Cool Earth, an organization he co-founded which finds sponsors for the rainforest as a way of protecting it.
“Eliasch held meetings with businessmen between 2006 and 2007 in which he proposed that they buy land in the Amazon and told them ‘only’ 50 billion dollars would be needed to acquire all the forest,” according to a report by Brazil’s Abin intelligence agency cited by O Globo.
The issue is a sensitive one for Brazil, which has been offended by statements by British politicians suggesting that the Amazon is too important to all of mankind to be left to the management of Brazil’s government alone.
Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva said on Monday that “the Brazilian Amazon has an owner and that owner is the Brazilian people.”
He told a gathering in Rio de Janeiro that while he was conscious of the need to conserve the forest, “there is also need to develop the Amazon.”
Brasilia has been progressively tightening laws aimed at protecting the huge forest by cracking down on illegal ranchers, farmers and loggers, and stepping up vigilance against foreigners looking to exploit its biodiversity.
Eliasch, who lives in London and has an estimated net worth of US$790 million, stopped being a significant donor to Britain’s conservative party in September. He switched allegiance to Brown’s Labour Party, apparently winning his special consulting post in the process.
Although Cool Earth has generally received positive evaluations in Britain and the US, some accuse the organization of embarking on “green colonialism” and compounding the problems of indigenous groups living in the Amazon.
Through the noise of rushing papers and whirring belts at a print factory in Kyoto, two creators watch their photo essay come to life in broadsheet form — part of an effort to win new audiences in the age of artificial intelligence (AI). Despite the decline of the publishing industry, self-publication and handmade “zine” magazines are growing in popularity in Japan, reflecting the nation’s enduring love of paper in the digital era. While speaking to Agence France-Presse at the plant, his hands black with ink, one of the creators, Kazuma Obara, said: “I think [paper] is a medium that engages all five
‘ABSURD MISTAKE’: The election commission said that there had been a failure to anticipate turnout after 14 polling stations ran short of ballot papers South Korean riot police yesterday cleared protesters from a Seoul polling station after a 35-hour blockade sparked by a shortage of ballot papers during local elections earlier this week. Wednesday’s election was the first nationwide vote since South Korean President Lee Jae-myung took office following the ouster of Yoon Suk-yeol over his short-lived martial law declaration. Lee’s ruling Democratic Party swept most races, but failed to flip the crucial Seoul mayoral seat. The South Korean National Election Commission apologized, blaming a failure to anticipate turnout after 14 polling stations in Seoul ran short of ballot papers. Some polling stations stayed open until 10pm to
France experienced its hottest spring on record, the French weather service said on Tuesday, after an exceptional early heat wave that also broke highs for the season in England and Wales. Meteo-France said the average nationwide temperature over March to May was 13.8°C — about 1.7°C above the norm, and surpassing records set in 2011 and 2020. “The warmest spring since records began in 1900,” it said in a bulletin. All three months were warmer than average, but the onset of an “unprecedented heatwave” late last month pushed the mercury to highs typically seen at the height of the summer. “Our country had never
A Sherpa guide was found crawling to base camp on Mount Everest a week after he went missing and was reunited with his family, who had given up hope he would return. Dawa Sherpa was last seen on Friday last week descending the mountain, but he did not reach base camp even though his client did. The pair were among the last climbers on the mountain as the climbing season came to an end and the route was dismantled. Dawa was located by a cleaning crew on Thursday morning as he was crawling down the snowy slopes around the Khumbu Icefall, just above
RSS