Grow Up! - Conflict Resolution and the Amazon Rain Forest Fire

By: Emily Michienzi

The Amazon Rain Forest is an incredibly important global natural resource.[1] The Amazon alone is responsible for storing eighty-six billion tons of carbon with its three hundred ninety billion trees.[2] As the Amazon takes in carbon, it produces oxygen.[3] The Amazon Rain Forest is responsible for about six percent of the Earth’s oxygen.[4] In addition, thirty percent of the world’s plant and animal species live in the Amazon, including many species that have medicinal and nutritional value for humans.[5]

In early August 2019, the Brazilian National Institute for Space Research reported that fires within the Amazon Rain Forest had increased seventy-seven percent from 2018.[6] The National Institute of Space Research was able to determine that about 39,194 fires were currently burning large swaths of the rain forest.[7] Unlike forest fires in the United States, which can occur naturally and can have beneficial effects for certain ecosystems, the Amazon Rain Forest experiences very few natural fires due to its moist and humid climate.[8] These fires, though exacerbated by drought and the dry season, have stemmed primarily from farmers looking to expand operations by opening up the forest for agricultural development.[9] These farmers routinely use slash and burn techniques to open up the forest for rich agricultural land used for products sold on the global market, like soy and cattle.[10]

The Amazon Rain Forest fire has garnered global attention.[11] At the 2019 G-7 summit, world leaders pledged $22 million dollars to Brazil’s President Bolsonaro to help fight the fires.[12] While many would gladly accept $22 million dollars, Bolsonaro rejected the offer.[13] Bolsonaro stated that he feared global intervention in his management of the Amazon Rain Forest because it symbolized an act of colonization.[14] “[T]he Amazon is Brazil’s, not yours,” Bolsonaro stated to the world.[15] But fears of colonization and environmental interventionism were not the only reasons Bolsonaro rejected the aide. There currently exists a petty feud between Bolsonaro and French President Macron.[16] In early August, Bolsonaro responded to a Facebook post joking about Macron’s wife being twenty-five years older than the President.[17] Macron took serious offense to the fellow world leader’s comments.[18] In response, Macron stated that Bolsonaro was a liar specifically about his commitment to climate change and his actions to protect the Amazon Rain Forest.[19] Now, Bolsonaro will not accept the aide for the Amazon fire until Macron apologizes for calling him a liar.[20]

Bolsonaro and Macron are currently in personal conflict with each other. Macron is interested in preserving the Amazon Rain Forest. Bolsonaro is interested in preserving Brazil’s autonomy in governing the Amazon. In addition, the personal slights between both presidents are creating additional conflicts that are permeating their ability to resolve the bigger conflict: the destruction of the Amazon Rain Forest.

Conflict is defined as “a process in which one party perceives that its interests are being opposed or negatively affected by another party.”[21] Conflict resolution is defined as “efforts to prevent or mitigate violence resulting from intergroup or interstate conflict, as well as efforts to reduce the underlying disagreements.”[22] “[C]omplex and multiple issues are more likely to generate misunderstanding, to tap divergent interests or unearth dissimilar goals.”[23] While the issues facing world leaders are many and complex, utilizing some basic conflict resolution skills may just assist in situations such as the feud between President Macron and President Bolsonaro. The first step in basic childhood conflict resolution is to stop and understand the other person’s perspective.[24] In this step, each party to the conflict states their concerns and feelings about the problem while the other party actively listens.[25] Then the parties can come to a solution.[26] The parties can brainstorm many different solutions and evaluate each one while considering the other party’s feelings, perspectives, and positions.[27] Sometimes it is helpful to employ a mediator to keep the tensions at bay and facilitate the conversation.[28] Both parties need to approach the conflict and the resolution of that conflict, not as zero-sum where one person will win while the other loses, but rather as a team problem that both parties must tackle.[29]

Environmental issues and crises like the burning of the Amazon Rain Forest are complex. On the one hand, many see the preservation of the rain forest as the only goal Brazil should have. Others realize that Brazil is a developing country that is looking for economic development and has found it in agriculture, which requires the destruction of the Amazon to create more available land. Still, others realize that those countries that are only concerned about the preservation of the Amazon are readily purchasing agricultural products from Brazil that come directly from the increasingly deforested Amazon. The zero-sum approach to the Amazon specifically between France and Brazil needs to end. Solutions exist that can balance the seemingly competing interests of both countries. If global powers and corporations began to look at the Amazon as a “new frontier” for innovation, Brazilians may turn from agricultural practices that require deforestation to conservation and exploratory practices in order to locate new resources like products to use in medicine and harvestable products to sell on the world market.[30]

But these solutions will never exist if countries do not employ a modicum of basic conflict resolution and sit down, discuss their needs and feelings and then attack the problem as a team. Environmental destruction cannot be solved with an individualist, zero-sum mindset. Rather, it will only be solved if the global community can come together, resolve the petty conflicts, and tackle larger issues with a cooperative mindset.

#Blogpost #Brazil #France #AmazonForestFire

[1] Rhett Butler, The Importance of the Amazon Rainforest, Mongabay (April 1, 2019), https://rainforests.mongabay.com/amazon/amazon_importance.htm.

[2] Id.

[3] Jenifer Leman, 4 Reasons Why We Need the Amazon Rainforest, Popular Mechanics (Sep. 4, 2019), https://www.popularmechanics.com/science/environment/a28910396/amazon-rainforest-importance/.

[4] Id.  

[5] Butler, supra note 1.

[6] Manuel Andreoni & Christine Hauser, Fires in the Amazon Rain forest have Surged this Year, N.Y. Times (Aug. 21, 2019), https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/21/world/americas/amazon-rainforest.html.

[7] Id.

[8] Aristos Georgiou, How Did the Amazon Rainforest Fires Start?, Newsweek (Aug. 22, 2019), https://www.newsweek.com/amazon-rainforest-fires-start-1455685.

[9] Id.

[10] Id.

[11] Id.

[12] Lawrence Douglas, Do the Brazil Amazon fires justify environmental interventionism?, Guardian (Aug. 31,2019), https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/aug/31/brazil-amazon-fires-justify-environmental-interventionism.

[13] Ailsa Change, Brazil’s President Says He Won’t Accept $20 Million From G-7 Without an Apology, NPR (Aug. 27, 2019), https://www.npr.org/2019/08/27/754811245/brazils-president-says-he-won-t-accept-20-million-from-g7-without-an-apology.

[14] Dom Phillios, Bolsonaro declares ‘the Amazon is ours’ and calls deforestation data ‘lies’, Guardian (July 19, 2019), https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/jul/19/jair-bolsonaro-brazil-amazon-rainforest-deforestation.

[15] Id.

[16] Amazon fires: Brazil to reject G7 offer of $22 million aid, BBC (Aug. 27, 2019), https://www.bbc.com/news/world-latin-america-49479470.

[17] Id.

[18] Id.

[19] Id.

[20] Id.

[21] James Wall & Ronda Callister, Conflict and Its Management, 21 J. of Management 515, 517 (1995), https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/014920639502100306.

[22] Committee on International Conflict Resolution, Conflict Resolution in a Changing World, in International Conflict Resolution After the Cold War 1, 2 (2000), https://www.nap.edu/read/9897/chapter/2.

[23] Wall, supra note 21.  

[24] Conflict resolution- for kids, Child and Youth Health (last updated Nov. 22, 2018), http://www.cyh.com/HealthTopics/HealthTopicDetailsKids.aspx?p=335&np=287&id=1521

[25] Id.

[26] Id.

[27] Id.

[28] Id.

[29]Jonathan R. Cohen, A Genesis of Conflict: The Zero-Sum Mindset, 17 Cardozo J. of Conflict Resol. 427, 427-29 (2016), available at http://scholarship.law.ufl.edu/facultypub/743.

[30]Carlos Nobre, Gilvan Sampaio, Laura Borma, Juan Carlos Castilla-Rubio, Jose Silva, & Manoel Cardoso, Land-use and climate change risks in the Amazon and the need of a novel sustainable development paradigm, 113 PNAS  10759, 10765 (Sept. 27,2016), https://www.pnas.org/content/pnas/113/39/10759.full.pdf