 Hello and welcome to NewsClick. Fires in the Amazon are continuing to rage, with an 84% increase in the number of fires recorded this year as compared to the same period last year. Brazil's president here, Bolsonaro, has given a variety of reasons for this increase, going from climactic conditions to saying that environmentalists are deliberately causing these fires to malign his government. But scientists have given different reasons. So today we have with us Praveepur Kayashta to talk more about these reasons and the responses that have come to it. So Praveepu, starting with the causes, can you tell us more about why there has been such an increase in the number of fires this year? Well, if you know what Bolsonaro stood for in the election itself, he has said that he thinks there are too many Indians as he calls them, indigenous people. And in the Amazon, they have just too much land, therefore his program from the beginning and he stated it with no hesitation, no obfuscation, no pretence, was to clear large areas in the Amazon, use it for cattle ranching or for soya cultivation, open it for logging companies as well as open it for mines. So this has been stated, shall we say, objective. And if you see where the fires are taking place, of course, this is the start of the dry season, every year there are fires in the Amazon in this period and this will go up to about September, October. But the point is the numbers that have increased sharply this year, we can also see they are taking place next to roads. So therefore, there does seem to be a deliberate intention starting from the edges, so to say, to eat into the Amazon exactly as Bolsonaro and his, shall we say, his friends and relations want, which is to take away land from the Amazon forests and use it for other purposes. So this I think is the basic issue and not only was this pointed out by the Brazilian space agency and in showing this increase in fires, but the head of the space agency was sacked because he pointed this out. Now the question is what now we have is independent conservation what the Brazilian space agency had said and this has come out from variety of, shall we say, sources based in the space because there are number of, shall we say, satellites which image the globe and some of them are specifically devoted to imaging forest fires. So all of this, and this is a picture that we have from the Modi system, all of this show the increased frequency of fires and it is very easy to compare the satellite imagery of this year to last year. So I think the case is not even open to question and the fact that Bolsonaro showed no interest in fighting the fires earlier. Now of course, he has declared a moratorium for the time being on the forest fires, which means that he said, hey, wait a little, it's getting too hot for me and after some time you know you can do it again. So this seems to be the approach, there is no fundamental change in the approach. Even as latest a week back, he has gone on record talking of too many Indians. Earlier he had even said that the American, the US cavalry was efficient, meaning in removing quote unquote Indians from North America and we have been less efficient. The Brazilian cavalry was less efficient. So you know, in a certain sense it really speaks of a larger genocidal agenda he seems to have regarding the Amazon and particularly his indigenous people. And also what do you think about the responses coming to this, these fires of course as Bolsonaro's response, but also these fires are not limited to just Brazil, there's also Bolivia which is neighboring Brazil and President Ivo Morales' response has been quite different. So what do you think about these responses and the global responses that have come? I think there are two sets of issues here. One is that there is an argument which the Amazonian countries including Brazil, Bolivia, Argentina, Paraguay and others have made, which is that Amazon is very important for the world and we can discuss why it is so. But more than that, if we have to keep our forests then there has to be a global compensation for what we are doing. This is a part of the climate justice agenda, which means easy financing, low loans, low cost loans to the people to develop alternate ways of using this. Scientific forestry also must be supported by finance. And if you don't want the rich countries to grow forests, which none of them seem to be willing to do, I just don't see that you know you could reverse shall we say the forestry in western Europe and so on. Then of course the demand of climate justice is this country should be compensated. So all of these countries have said that we need to use the forest land efficiently and also expand agriculture in some of the areas, but taking into account the needs of the environment and Ivo Morales and Bolivia have taken the issue of forest fires very seriously. We have pictures of him fighting the forest fires. But the real issue that underlies all of this is the issue also of climate justice and development that you cannot think of the Amazon forest being kept without they are being in some sense globally supported in this endeavor because it is a fact that this land under forest can be utilized. The question is how can it be utilized in the way that it makes sense to the people of the area. It makes sense to the indigenous people who are still there and it makes sense also to the rest of the world. This is a complex democratic process of reconciling this. So I don't think it's just a question of either or as Bolsonaro is posing or a lot of the global north shall we say also argues that Amazon forest should be left as is, but they are also not willing to take into account that what is it that we do in order for the Amazon forest to be kept. That's I think also the larger question we have. What is very clear that there is behind this whether it is a Trump or it's a Bolsonaro. There is also the white nationalism agenda that the indigenous people deserve to be thrown out and we should use those economic resources for our benefit. And there is also the agenda of shall we say big capital. How can we really use this more efficiently, more efficiently for the corporate world. And all of this is also enmeshed with the climate denial, climate change deniers, which to which both Bolsonaro and both Trump belong. It's interesting that the global right is generally a climate change skeptic and even Mr. Modi for instance really doesn't seem to believe in climate change because he's been on record earlier about it. And of course he gives lip service to it today. But if you see the for instance attack to the forest rights act in India coming from this government, you see a similar pattern that seems to be there. So both so both aspects are involved. One is the attitude to the indigenous people and the other is the attitude to climate change itself and the interest of capital versus the interest of the people. So we also have a lot of economic models that advocate that it is better to mitigate the effects of these changes later on in the future rather than addressing them now. And right now it's just better to work in the interest of capital. So what do you feel about these? Is this the way to go? Well, they argue that it's better to work in the effects for development. Not they don't say they want to work for capital. That's of course the argument they would give and they would also say that the mitigation in the future is less costly because we'd be richer. So this is the argument. Of course, as we know, all economic models appear to be objective but they have their values embedded in it in different forms. So this I would say embeds the value of capital and that too of the developed countries in this model in different ways. One is the effect of climate change. And as we know, if the Amazonian forest fires continue, then this means a huge release of carbon dioxide there and it has a very serious implication for climate change because this will push very rapidly the greenhouse effects in the world. And those effects one release cannot really be reversed. So if we want to start addressing climate change and not mitigation, then we have to see this does not happen. And the Nordhaus model, which one of them is the one you're referring to, would argue that let's not worry too much about that, but let's address the rise of the sea levels and what will happen in terms of mitigation. So I would argue that the issue that they don't want to address is that unfortunately, climate change is not going to have effect everybody equally. It is going to have less effect on what's called the temperate lands, the global north as it were, Western Europe, North America, Canada, and so on. And it will have much more adverse effect in what's called the global south, which is the tropics and equatorial regions. So you are going to see really that the burden of the climate change will fall much more on those who have not caused it and those who caused the major parts of the climate change, which is, of course, profligate use of carbon-based fuels, fossil fuels, and also consumption of the products of, shall we say, energy intensive industries. So both senses, these are the people who cause the climate change, but they're not going to feel the effect of this so badly. So therefore, shall we say, the differential impact of climate change is one issue. And this sounds coming from the global south that people in the global north to the advanced model is not surprising because it's really in their interest. The second part of it, if you look at capital, capital really doesn't look at long-term effects. It really looks at very short-term goals. And therefore, their goals are to make money today. And if you want to make money today, then, of course, looting, shall we say, the environment for resources, converting it to capital is a much bigger gain than what happens 30 years later. So capital is notoriously short-sighted. In fact, finance capital today looks at only a quarter's returns. So given that, all the econometric models that we are talking about, privilege, shall we say, short-term gains over long-term, shall we say, losses. And therefore, the econometric models are biased in favor of what I would call as the capital strategy for short-term gains. And I think this is also what we see. What we really need is a different way of looking at all of this. And unfortunately, economics should not is dominant today in the way we look at long-term issues. But when you look at long-term issues, they're far more societal. And that cannot be, shall we say, addressed by looking at the so-called econometric models we are talking about today. Thank you, Prabhi, for joining us today. And that's all the time we have. Thank you for watching NewsClick.