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Letters | Amazon fires: Hong Kong, with its huge appetite for beef from Brazil, could use its voice to make a difference
- Hong Kong is a big importer of Brazilian beef and hosts influential companies in the Brazil-China beef and leather supply chain
- Hong Kong companies must start holding their Brazilian suppliers accountable to anti-deforestation policies. Meanwhile, we can all eat less beef
As record-breaking fires rage across the Amazon rainforest – many deliberately set for illegal land grabbing and agriculture – international outrage is on the rise. Protests have erupted in cities the world over and a major European Union-South America trade deal is on the rocks after France and Ireland refused to ratify it.
Yet there is little sign Brazil’s president is about to seriously reverse the rhetoric and policies that have led to a rise in illegal fires; the country rejected a G7 pledge of US$20 million to fight the fires. Perhaps that is not surprising given the silence of a more important international customer than Europe: Hong Kong.
Hong Kong is one of the biggest markets for Brazilian meat, especially beef, one of the main drivers of habitat loss in ecosystems such as the Amazon and the Cerrado savannah. Last year, according to the Brazilian Beef Exporters Association, Hong Kong imported more Brazilian beef than any other destination, worth US$1.44 billion or 24 per cent of Brazil’s foreign beef exports. According to the Britain-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 outsize influence in addressing Amazon deforestation if it chooses to.
However, boycotting Brazilian meat, while not without precedent, is unlikely to be productive, unfairly punishing Brazilian companies who are trying to improve their sustainability practices and lending legitimacy to claims of international meddling in domestic affairs.
Instead, Hong Kong companies – traders, retailers, meat packers, restaurants and financiers – with ties to Brazil should take strategic action, taking guidance from the Accountability Framework initiative 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 a major contributor to.
Whatever action Hong Kong takes, it must happen now. Because the greatest horror of all is yet to come. Scientists predict that if 20-25 per cent of the Amazon rainforest is lost, an irreversible transition to a treeless savannah will be triggered. 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.
Thomas Gomersall, WWF-Hong Kong
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