Sting, a longtime activist who started the Rainforest Foundation Fund in an effort to bring awareness to forest protection, has issued a new statement on his Facebook page regarding the “unprecedented” number of fires happening in the Amazon.
“Amazonia is on fire at an unprecedented rate – 80% up from last year and with 39% more deforestation – and the world is suddenly taking notice,” he writes in the statement, pointing to how the Amazon has reached a record number of forest fires to take place in a decade this month. Elsewhere, Sting writes about how necessary it is to respond to what he calls “criminal negligence on a global scale,” saying:
“Populist leaders citing nationalist agendas, or claiming that climate change and its handmaidens are a hoax, are guilty of much more than standing by and doing nothing. This is criminal negligence on a global scale.
This is no place for the outdated bromides of nationalism in a world where we all breathe the same air and where we will all suffer the consequences of this wilful negligence.
Calling Amazonia the “lungs of the Earth” may not be exactly anatomically correct, but it does convey that it is a vital and irreplaceable link in the chain of wellbeing on our planet in the increasingly narrow band of climatic vectors where human life can survive. We simply cannot afford to let it burn.”
Sting’s Rainforest Foundation Fund works to protect the rainforests of Central and South America by working with and assisting the indigenous communities who live there. You can find Sting’s full statement below.
