Hong Kong’s role in the fight for the Amazon
by Thomas Gomersall
As record-breaking fires rage across the Amazon rainforest — many set deliberately for illegal land grabbing and agriculture — international outrage is on the rise. Protests have erupted in cities the world over and a major EU–South America trade deal is on the rocks after France and Ireland refused to ratify it.
Yet there is little sign that Brazil’s president is about to reverse course on his rhetoric and policies that have led to a rise in illegal fires, even rejecting a G7 pledge of US$22 million to control them. And perhaps that’s not surprising given the silence of a more important international customer than Europe: Hong Kong.
Surprisingly, Hong Kong is one of the biggest markets for Brazilian meat (especially beef), one of the main drivers of habitat loss in ecosystems like the Amazon and the Cerrado savannah. In 2018, it imported US$1.44 billion worth of Brazilian beef, which is more than any other economy and represents 24 per cent of Brazil’s foreign beef exports. According to the UK-based NGO, Global Canopy, Hong Kong hosts nine of the 20 most influential companies in the Brazil-China beef and leather supply chain. Meanwhile, Brazilian beef imports to China as a whole have tripled since 2014. Clearly, Hong Kong is a disproportionately important trading partner to Brazil and could wield disproportionate influence in addressing Amazon deforestation if it chose to take action.
However, boycotting Brazilian meat, while not without precedent, is unlikely to be productive, unfairly punishing Brazilian companies that are trying to improve their sustainability practices and lending legitimacy to false claims of international meddling in domestic affairs.
Instead, Hong Kong companies — traders, retailers, meat packers, restaurants and financers — with ties to Brazil should take strategic action, taking guidance from the Accountability Framework initiative (AFi) developed by WWF and its partners. They should adopt and implement concrete policies to combat deforestation in their supply chains, advocate the need to halt natural habitat destruction and call for stronger environmental policies in Hong Kong and abroad.
Consumers, too, must play their part. At least one of the companies identified by Global Canopy has links to major supermarkets in Hong Kong that sell beef, its source location clearly displayed on the packaging. Reducing beef consumption would help to curb both deforestation and Hong Kong’s own high carbon emissions, which meat is the main contributor to.
But whatever action Hong Kong takes, it must happen now. Because the greatest horror of all this is still yet to come. Scientists predict that if 20–25 per cent of the Amazon rainforest is lost, it will trigger an irreversible transition to a treeless savannah. If that happens, the planet’s biggest natural carbon absorber and any chance of solving the worsening climate crisis will be lost forever.
If the Amazon dies, so will we.
