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SpaceX CEO Elon Musk is in talks with Brazilian officials on a potential deal for the company to provide satellite internet in the Amazon rainforest and help detect illegal deforestation, Brazil said Wednesday.
Brazilian Communications Minister Fabio Faria met with the billionaire tech titan in Austin, Texas on Monday over a possible tie-up in which SpaceX would provide its satellite internet service, Starlink, to schools and health centers in remote areas, the ministry said.
SpaceX would also use its satellites to help police the destruction of the world's biggest rainforest, the ministry added.
"We are talking about environmental issues and connecting people in rural schools in Brazil," Faria said in a video posted on Twitter after the meeting.
"I'm very, very excited to start a partnership with Starlink and with SpaceX and Brazil."
Musk said he was "looking forward to providing connectivity to basically the least-served people in Brazil" and helping "ensure the preservation of the Amazon."
A ministry spokesman told AFP the meeting was a "first approach," and that there was no date yet for a deal to be signed.
Starlink uses a "constellation" of more than 1,500 low-orbit satellites to provide internet service accessible from most of the planet, including remote areas such as the Amazon, 60 percent of which is in Brazil.
The service could potentially usher in a connectivity revolution in Brazil, where around 40 million people lack internet access -- some 19 percent of the population.
Faria said the talks with the US-based space company aimed to bring internet access to every rural school in Brazil, as well as indigenous reservations and other remote areas.
The meeting comes as President Jair Bolsonaro's government seeks to combat international criticism that it has allowed a surge of deforestation in the Amazon, a vital resource in the race to curb climate change.
Since the far-right president took office in 2019, deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon has risen from an average of 6,500 square kilometers (2,500 square miles) per year during the previous decade to around 10,000, according to government data based on satellite images.
EU plans to ban food imports from deforested areas
Brussels (AFP) Nov 17, 2021 -
The EU plans to bar food and wood imports from deforested areas, according to a proposal unveiled Wednesday aimed at using its trade power to drive sustainability.
The draft law, which Brussels wants to turn into binding rules for all 27 European Union nations, would require companies show their soy, beef, palm oil, cocoa, coffee and wood products are certified "deforestation-free".
It follows an international pledge made at the COP26 summit last week to end deforestation by 2030.
"This proposal is a truly ground-breaking one," the EU commissioner for climate action policy, Virginijus Sinkevicius, told a media conference.
"It targets not just illegal deforestation but also deforestation driven by agricultural expansion," he said.
Under the EU plan, two criteria would have to be met: that the commodities are produced in accordance with the origin country's laws; and that they were not produced on land deforested or degraded since the beginning of 2021.
Imports from higher-risk countries would be subject to tighter checks.
The European Commission did not say when it hoped to have the new legislation adopted.
The rules could impact countries such as Brazil, where European disquiet at razing of the Amazon rainforest by cattle farmers is holding up implementation of an EU-Mercosur trade deal.
Clearing of the Amazon hit a new record last month, according to Brazil's National Institute for Space Research.
The environmental protection group WWF says the huge EU market is responsible for 16 percent of global deforestation linked to international trade.
It and other NGOs welcome the EU plan as a first step, but say it does not go far enough. Greenpeace says it does not address deforestation from other commodities such as rubber and maize, or from pig and poultry farming.
- Waste and soil -
Other sustainability proposals presented alongside the anti-deforestation rules were on waste management and improving the health of soils.
"These initiatives show that the European Union is serious about the green transition and just keeps moving forward with it," said the Commission vice president in charge of overseeing the EU's Green Deal, Frans Timmermans.
On waste, the Commission wants to see "circular economy" principles attached to the way it sends abroad its millions of tonnes of discarded metals, cardboard, plastic, textiles and other detritus.
Waste exports to non-OECD countries would be restricted and allowed only if those destinations agree and were able to handle them sustainably. Currently the two top destinations for EU waste in that category are Turkey and India.
Shipments to OECD countries would be monitored and suspended if grave environmental problems arose. Those destinations include Britain, Switzerland and Norway.
The soil strategy aims for a mix of voluntary and mandatory measures to increase soil carbon in farmland and fight desertification, to get soil ecosystems healthy by 2050.
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