RIO DE JANEIRO (AP) — Brazil’s President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva opened the U.N. General Assembly on Tuesday with a call for the world to do more to combat climate change.
He mentioned the fires ravaging the rainforest back home — but not the fact they’re adding to criticism of his administration’s own environmental stewardship. Brazil’s Amazon saw 38,000 blazes last month, the most for any August since 2010, according to data from the country’s space institute. September is on track to repeat that ignoble feat.
Smoke has been , including that’s thousands of miles away. Lula has cast these fires as the result of drought and criminals, and proposed harsher punishments for environmental offenders. “The Amazon is going through the worst drought in 45 years.
Forest fires spreading across the country have already devoured 5 million hectares (19,300 square miles) in August alone,” he said in New York. “My government does not outsource responsibility nor abdicate its sovereignty. We have already done a lot, but we know that much more needs to be done.
” But enforcement has been hampered by a six-month strike at environmental regulator Ibama that ended in August — three months after his administration was aware of significantly heightened risk of fires amid the historic drought. At the same time, members of his Cabinet have presented conflicting views of environmental and energy policies. And near the mouth of the Amazon River has worried environmentalist.