YOKOHAMA: The
fires tearing through the Amazon represent a "tipping point" for the
health of the rainforest, the head of a top global forestry management body
said Wednesday, urging the world to do more to save the trees. The situation in
the Amazon is "very urgent," stressed Gerhard Dieterle, executive
director of the International Tropical Timber Organisation, an
intergovernmental agency group that promotes sustainable forestry use.

"This is something
that might affect the integrity of the Amazon as a whole, because if the forest
fires spread, the grasslands become more prone to forest fires," Dieterle
told AFP on the sidelines of a conference on African development. "Many
experts fear it may be a tipping point" for the rainforest, as the latest
figures show a total of more than 82,000 fires blazing in Brazil, even as
military aircraft and troops help battle them.

More than half of
the fires are in the massive Amazon basin. Some of the blazes are down to
natural causes, Dieterle said, but they are mostly started deliberately by
farmers clearing land for agriculture. "If tropical dense forests are
affected by forest fires, they need many, many years to regroup. It will alter
the climate, the local climate, the national climate and the regional climate.
It will also have an influence on the global climate," said the forestry
expert.

Asked about the
G7's $20 million pledge to combat the flames, Dieterle said it was "a
beginning but much more is needed." "This is the national sovereignty
of Brazil... if they ask for funding, I think the world might be willing to
provide more resources," he said. On Tuesday, a spokesman for President
Jair Bolsonaro said Brazil would be prepared to accept foreign aid to fight the
fires, provided they control the cash.

Earlier, Brazil
had appeared to reject the G7 overtures during a war of words between Bolsonaro
and French President Emmanuel Macron, who hosted the meeting of the global
elite. "Mr Macron must withdraw the insults he made against me,"
Bolsonaro told reporters in the capital Brasilia on Tuesday. Dieterle made his
comments on the sidelines of the TICAD conference on African development held
in Yokohama near Tokyo.

Earlier he warned
delegates that "deforestation and forest degradation continue at an
alarming rate in many African countries." Given the expected rise in
African populations from 1.2 billion today to 4.4 billion by the end of the
century, he also sounded the alarm bell over a lack of wood products for
construction and cooking. "In the same way we talk about food security, we
need also to talk about 'wood security' and 'water security'. We must focus
more on the role and use of productive forests before it is too late,"
Dieterle said. - AFP