When farmer Julimar Pansera purchased land in Brazil’s interior seven years ago, it was blanketed in tiers of fruit trees, twisted shrubs and the occasional palm standing tall in a thicket of undergrowth.

He mowed down most of that vegetation, set it ablaze and started planting soybeans. Over the past decade, he and others in the region have deforested an area larger than South Korea.

Permissive land-use policies and cheap farm acreage here have helped catapult Brazil into an agricultural superpower, the world’s largest exporter of soy, beef and chicken and a major producer of pork and corn. This area has also lured farmers and ranchers away from the Amazon jungle, whose decline has spurred a global outcry to protect it.

The tradeoff, environmentalists say, is that while Brazil has slowed destruction of the renowned rainforest from its worst levels, it has put another vital ecological zone at risk: a vast tropical savanna that is home to 5 percent of species on the planet.

Known as the Cerrado, this habitat lost more than 105,000 square kilometers (40,541 square miles) of native cover since 2008, according to government figures. That’s 50 percent more than the deforestation seen during the same period in the Amazon, a biome more than three times larger. Accounting for relative size, the Cerrado is disappearing nearly four times faster than the rainforest.

The largest savanna in South America, the Cerrado is a vital storehouse for carbon dioxide, the greenhouse gas whose rising emissions from fossil fuels and deforestation are warming the world’s atmosphere. Brazilian officials have cited protection of native vegetation as critical to meeting its obligations under the Paris Agreement on climate change. But scientists warn the biome has reached a tipping point that could hamper Brazil’s efforts and worsen global warming.

By focusing on one problem, Brazil essentially created another, said Ane Alencar, science director of the non-profit Amazon Environmental Research Institute, known as IPAM.

“There’s a high risk for the climate associated with this expansion,” Alencar said. “Limiting and calling attention to deforestation in the Amazon, in a way it forced the agribusiness industry to expand in the Cerrado.”

The toll can already be seen in the region’s water resources. Streams and springs are filling with silt and drying up as vegetation around them vanishes. That in turn is weakening the headwaters of vital rivers flowing to the rest of the country, scientists say. The imperiled waterways include the Sao Francisco, Brazil’s longest river outside the Amazon, where water levels are hitting never-before-seen lows in the dry season.

“The removal of vegetation can lead a body of water to extinction,” said Liliana Pena Naval, an environmental engineering professor at the Federal University of Tocantins.

Wildlife, too, is under threat, including rare hyacinth macaws, maned wolves and jaguars that call the shrinking savanna home. So are thousands of plants, fish, insects and other creatures found nowhere else on earth, many of which are only beginning to be studied.

“I compare it to the burning of the ancient Library of Alexandria,” said Mercedes Bustamante, an ecologist at the University of Brasilia. “You lose the accumulated evolutionary record of thousands of years that never can be recovered.”

Farmers see the Cerrado’s development as critical to global food security and their nation’s prosperity. Brazil’s agriculture sector grew a sizzling 13 percent in 2017, while the overall economy barely budged. The nation’s ability to keep producing new farmland cheaply has given it an edge over rivals and cemented its status as a vital supplier to the world’s tables.

“Imagine, if not for Brazil’s production, how much more hunger would there be,” farmer Pansera said.

The Green Revolution

Roughly the size of Mexico, straddling Brazil’s mid-section from its far western borders with Paraguay and stretching northeast toward the Atlantic coast, the Cerrado has seen about half of its native forests and grasslands converted to farms, pastures and urban areas over the past 50 years.

Deforestation in the region has slowed from the early 2000s, when Brazil’s soy boom was gaining steam. Still, farmers continue to plow under vast stretches of the biome, propelled largely by Chinese demand for Brazilian meat and grain. The Asian nation is Brazil’s No. 1 buyer of soybeans to fatten its own hogs and chickens. China is also a major purchaser of Brazilian pork, beef and poultry to satisfy the tastes of its increasingly affluent consumers.

Rising trade tensions between China and the United States have only deepened that connection. Brazil’s soybean exports by value to China are up 18 percent through the first seven months of the year as Chinese buyers have canceled tens of millions of dollars’ worth of contracts with U.S. suppliers.

The trend bodes well for producers in the Cerrado’s frontier region known as Matopiba, shorthand for the northeastern Brazilian states of Maranhao, Tocantins, Piaui and Bahia. Land here is cheap. Virgin plots near Pansera in the state of Tocantins can be had for $248 an acre on average, according to agribusiness consultancy Informa Economics IEG FNP. That compares to an average of $3,080 per acre for already cleared farmland in the United States. Soy planting in Matopiba has more than doubled over the past decade.

Pansera, 50, is part of a wave of industrious transplants from southern Brazil who are remaking the region. His formal education stopped at middle school, but he found land enough in the Cerrado to match his big ambitions. He now presides over nearly 19 square miles (49 square kilometers) of manicured soy fields and has about 20 full-time workers on his payroll.

Pansera’s soybeans will bring in an estimated profit of nearly 5 million reais ($1.23 million) this year, most of which he plans to invest back into the farm.

Government policies have intentionally driven industrial-scale farming here. Short on farmland to feed its growing population, Brazil in the 1970s looked to its vast savanna, a region early explorers had dubbed “cerrado,” or “closed,” because of its tangled woodlands.

State agriculture scientists developed fertilizers and additives to fix the acidic, nutrient-poor earth and created soybean strains that could thrive in the tropics. Arable land exploded. Within a decade, Brazil transformed itself from a food importer to a net exporter. By the 1990s it was moving global commodities markets.

“Agriculture in the Cerrado is what took Brazil to the next level,” Agriculture Minister Blairo Maggi told Reuters. Known as Brazil’s “Soy King,” Maggi is a billionaire whose family runs one of the largest private soybean operations in the world, much of it in the Cerrado.

Maggi said growers are respectful of legally allowed limits on deforestation. Their “rational” occupation of the Cerrado has helped Brazil’s economy, he said.

Farmers have emerged as a powerful political force bent on keeping Brazil’s countryside open for business. Lawmakers in the country’s largely rural, pro-agriculture voting bloc, who comprise more than 40 percent of the nation’s congress, have led a rollback of environmental laws in recent years.

Those efforts include a 2012 loosening of Brazil’s landmark Forest Code that sets requirements for preserving native vegetation. The change reduced potential penalties for farmers, ranchers and loggers charged with past illegal deforestation, and made it easier for landowners to clear more of their holdings. Annual deforestation in the Amazon last year was up 52 percent from a record low in 2012.

Still, environmental protections there remain the most robust in Brazil. Rainforest farmers are required by law to preserve 80 percent of native vegetation on their plots.

And global grain traders in 2006 voluntarily agreed to stop purchasing any soy harvested from newly deforested Amazon jungle areas. As part of its obligations under the Paris Agreement, the government pledged to eliminate illegal Amazon deforestation by 2030.

Brazil has made no similar push to preserve the Cerrado, which has long been viewed as a resource to be developed.

Cerrado farmers are required to preserve as little as 20 percent of the natural cover, and up to 35 percent in areas neighboring the Amazon. Those who don’t maximize use of their tracts risk having their land declared idle and subject to redistribution under a 1980 federal land-reform initiative aimed at assisting rural, low-income people, said Elvison Nunes Ramos, sustainability coordinator with the Ministry of Agriculture.

“The message being sent to the farmer is that he should not preserve, he should deforest,” Nunes Ramos said of the policy.

A spokesman for Incra, the government agency that verifies the use of the rural land, said its job is to ensure “the fulfillment of the social function of the property.”

Water, wildlife under threat

Environmentalists say the Cerrado’s wooded grasslands have failed to capture the public’s attention the way the Amazon’s lush jungles have.

People view the Cerrado “just as bushes, twisted vegetation and shrubs,” lamented Alencar, the science director at IPAM.

What many don’t see, she said, is the connection between the soybean-fed meat on their plates and the steady decline of one of the world’s great carbon sinks, a bulwark against global warming.

Plants here send roots deep into the earth to survive seasonal drought and fires, creating a vast underground network that some have likened to an upside-down forest. Destruction of surface vegetation, and the resulting die-off of the life below, released 248 million tons of greenhouse gas into the atmosphere in 2016, according to estimates by the Climate Observatory, a Brazilian conservation group. That’s roughly two-and-a-half times the annual tailpipe emissions from all cars in Brazil.

Watersheds are hurting, too.

In Palmeirante, a rural municipality in the state of Tocantins, subsistence farmer Ronivon Matias de Andrade blames expanding mega-farms for damaging a community water source.

Dressed in faded shorts and flip flops, he showed a visitor the remains of what until recently had been a shady woodland: uprooted trees and freshly exposed earth pocked with heavy-equipment tracks.

Stripped of its vegetation, sandy topsoil is now filling a nearby creek and an adjoining freshwater pool where he and other rural families draw drinking water. He scooped up a murky handful in disgust.

“How many are being finished off in this manner in this state?” 43-year-old Andrade said.

Environmentalists say vanishing creeks like those in Palmeirante are threatening the nation’s water supply. Seemingly insignificant sources — tiny brooks, nameless rivulets — are vital building blocks supplying water to tributary streams that in turn feed some of Brazil’s largest rivers.

Of a dozen major water systems in Brazil, eight are born in the Cerrado. They include the Sao Francisco, the country’s fourth-largest river, which was once famed for its paddle-wheeled riverboats known as gaiolas. Environmentalists say man-made diversions, including agriculture and hydroelectric dams, have helped alter water levels to a degree that long stretches of the river are now unnavigable during the dry season.

Loss of native ground cover is also driving microclimate change in the region, they say. Reduced vegetation leads to higher ground temperatures and lower humidity, a recipe for less rainfall. A study conducted at the University of Brasilia links deforestation to an 8.4 percent drop in precipitation from 1977 to 2010 in the Cerrado.

Cerrado wildlife is under pressure as habitat shrinks. More than 300 species that dwell here are considered threatened with extinction, according to the government. Among them are 44 rare types of “annual fish” unique to the Cerrado whose short lives begin with spring rains and end with the summer heat. Scientists suspect that increasing dry spells could be interrupting their delicate reproduction cycles.

Other creatures, including rheas — giant ostrich-like birds — will soon join the endangered species list if nothing is done to reverse the slide, says Ricardo Machado, a zoology professor at the University of Brasilia. He said the birds’ numbers have plummeted due to loss of native ground cover critical to breeding and nesting.

Machado worries that unique Cerrado plants, insects and other creatures may vanish before scientists have an opportunity to identify them, much less study them.

“There is a universe to be discovered,” Machado said. “All attention is focused on the Amazon, no one speaks for the Cerrado.”

Reining in the soy boom

That’s beginning to change.

Dozens of groups, including Greenpeace, the World Wildlife Foundation and the Brazilian research group IPAM, last year began pushing for large multinationals to protect the biome. In a document known as the Cerrado Manifesto, they called for immediate action to stop deforestation in the region.

More than 60 companies, including McDonalds, Unilever and Walmart, have signed on so far. The firms have agreed to support measures that would eliminate native vegetation loss in the Cerrado from their supply chains. But in contrast to the 2006 Amazon soy moratorium, the Cerrado Manifesto did not commit signatories to halt purchases of farm products from newly deforested areas.

Walmart and Unilever said they are committed to achieving zero net deforestation in their supply chains by 2020, meaning any destruction in one region would be offset by recuperation of similar forest elsewhere. Walmart said all its beef suppliers in the Cerrado are monitored to ensure they don’t contribute to deforestation there. McDonalds didn’t respond to a request for comment.

Separately, Netherlands-based Louis Dreyfus Company in June became the first major commodity trader to pledge to stop buying soy from newly deforested land specifically in the Cerrado. The company gave no timetable, but said it would work to establish a “realistic target date” to end deforestation in its Cerrado supply chain.

Brazil’s former Minister of Environment Jose Sarney Filho, who recently left office to run for Senate, has proposed an international effort to compensate landowners who preserve natural habitat. He raised the issue at last November’s global climate summit in Germany, but the effort has yet to attract major backers.

Farmer Pansera, meanwhile, sees big things ahead for his patch of the Cerrado. Supervising the harvest on his land earlier this year, he watched a pair of combines chew through rows of soybean plants. The giant machines stripped away the beans and spit them into empty grain trucks rolling just behind to catch the bounty.

He said there is no future without growth, and the frontier region of Matopiba is just getting started. He plans to plant an additional 180 hectares of soy next year on newly cleared land.

“There is still a large area to be opened,” Pansera said. “It will be one of the great centers of Brazilian agriculture.”
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India said on Tuesday it expected to spend less than 100 billion rupees ($1.43 billion) on its first manned space mission to be launched by 2022, suggesting it is likely to be cheaper than similar projects by the United States and China.

India is cultivating a reputation as a low-cost space power, after the 2014 launch of an unmanned Mars mission at a cost of $74 million, or less than the budget of the Hollywood space blockbuster Gravity and a fraction of the $671 million the U.S. space agency NASA spent on its MAVEN Mars mission.

The Indian manned mission, announced this month by Prime Minister Narendra Modi and to be led by the Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO), will aim to send a three-member crew to space for five to seven days in a craft that will be placed in a low Earth orbit of 300-400 km, the Department of Space said in a statement.

“ISRO has developed some critical technologies like re-entry mission capability, crew escape system, crew module configuration, thermal protection system, deceleration and floatation system, sub-systems of life support system etc required for this program,” the statement said.

ISRO Chairman K. Sivan said the agency had “perfected the engineering aspects of the mission,” although it was new to the field of bioscience — dealing with living beings.

Private agencies will also participate in the mission, and ISRO might consider collaborations with space agencies from “friendly countries with advanced space programs,” the statement added.

India’s neighbor and old rival China first sent humans to space in 2003, becoming only the third country to have such capability after Russia and the United States.

China’s Shenzhou program is secretively run through military and government agencies and its budget is not public. In 2003, officials said it had cost 18 billion yuan ($2.62 billion).

India’s space program has a total budget of around $4 billion, and Modi’s government hopes recent satellite launches — many on behalf of foreign governments — would improve its prospects of winning a larger share of the more than $300 billion global space industry.

Earlier this month, NASA unveiled its analysis of data collected from lunar orbit by an Indian spacecraft. The findings marked the first time scientists confirmed by direct observation the presence of water on the moon’s surface — in hundreds of patches of ice deposited in the darkest and coldest reaches of its polar regions.
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Sizzling weather this summer will put pressure on almost 200 governments to reach a deal in Poland in December on the details of a global plan to limit climate change, the incoming president of the U.N. talks said.

Environment ministers will meet in Katowice, the heart of Poland’s coal-producing region, Silesia, to agree on rules for the 2015 Paris climate accord. That accord set a sweeping goal of ending the fossil fuel era this century, but the text was vague on details.

“Paris is empty without Katowice,” Michal Kurtyka, a former deputy energy minister of Poland who will preside at the December 3-14 talks, told Reuters.

Poland, which generates most of its electricity from coal, is hosting the annual U.N. climate talks for the third time.

“The Paris Agreement includes certain principles. However, the way they will be implemented will be described in the Katowice package. So the more detailed and concrete it is, the better,” Kurtyka said.

Hot weather this summer that set off wildfires from California to Greece has made officials more determined to reach a detailed deal in Katowice, he said.

“For sure this is something that affected millions of people all over the world. … Societies in particular countries will act on politicians. I think that this will increase political determination for the solutions to be as concrete and as

detailed as possible,” Kurtyka said.

Bangkok session

Many issues remain to be discussed at an extra session in Bangkok next month, he said, where “a vision of the whole should be built.”

Some of the sticking points include the way the countries report on their emission reductions, adapting to climate change and financing tools, he said.

Environmentalists have complained about foot-dragging by the countries involved. French Environment Minister Nicolas Hulot resigned Tuesday in frustration over sluggish progress on climate goals.

Writing the “rule book” — formally known as “implementation guidelines” — is the biggest test of the international commitment to the Paris Agreement since President Donald Trump said in June last year that he would pull the United States out.

“If some countries, such as for example the U.S., conclude that they are not ready to follow the Paris Agreement direction, then I’d assume that all other countries will seek to keep their presence so that they are part of the agreement,” Kurtyka said.

“I will strive for all parties to become signatories, whereas the question I will ask at the end will be: ‘Do I hear a voice of objection?’ I hope not.”

The choice of Poland for the climate talks is itself a point of contention, because of its dependence on coal. In February, the European Union’s top court said the country had failed to uphold air-quality standards, one of several environmental conflicts between Poles and the EU.

“The opinions that Poland is not a reliable climate talks host, due to the significant share of coal in power production, are formulated from the EU perspective. The world is more diverse than that,” Kurtyka said.

Kurtyka was appointed the climate talks president in April. He replaced the former Environment Minister Jan Szyszo, who had been initially named to preside at the conference in Katowice.

Szyszko had approved the increased logging in the ancient Bialowieza Forest in 2016, another of Poland’s conflicts with the European Union.
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By slashing food waste and improving waste management and recycling, 23 global cities and regions representing 150 million people pledged Tuesday to significantly cut the pollution-causing garbage they generate by 2030.

Places like New York, Tokyo, London, Paris and Sydney vowed to “cut the amount of waste generated by each citizen 15 percent by 2030,” said a statement from C40 Cities, a global network dedicated to fighting climate change.

They will also “reduce the amount of waste sent to landfills and incineration by 50 percent and increase the diversion rate to 70 percent by 2030,” according to the declaration.

The goal of the “Advancing Towards Zero Waste Declaration” is to avoid the disposal of at least 87 million tons of waste by 2030.   

Waste is becoming one of the leading threats to the environment, increasing faster than any other pollutant.

Each year, 1.3 billion tons of wasted food is sent to landfills where rotting scraps send the potent heat-trapping greenhouse gas methane into the atmosphere.

Improving waste and material management around the world could reduce global emissions by 20 percent, and are “essential” to delivering on the goals of the 2015 Paris climate accords and keeping global temperature rise below 1.5 Celsius, said the C40 Cities statement.

The announcement was released ahead of the Global Climate Action Summit in San Francisco in mid-September.

Signatories include Auckland, Copenhagen, Dubai, London, Milan, Montreal, New York City, Newburyport, Paris, Philadelphia, Portland, Rotterdam, San Jose, San Francisco, Santa Monica, Sydney, Tel Aviv, Tokyo, Toronto, Vancouver, Washington D.C., and the regions of Navarra and Catalonia.

Specific steps include reducing food waste and facilitating safe food donation.

Participating areas may encourage separate collection of food scraps that could be used for compost, and supporting local policies like sustainable procurement and boosting awareness and use of recycling for construction and demolition materials.

Areas may also support reductions or bans on single-use and non-recyclable plastics.

The signatories pledged to publicly report their progress every two years.

“Dramatically reducing waste will help curb carbon emissions while helping us build a fairer, cleaner and more livable city for all New Yorkers,” said New York Mayor Bill de Blasio.

“We’re proud to stand alongside other leading cities worldwide in taking ambitious steps to cut down on waste.”
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The World Health Organization (WHO) reports the next seven to 10 days are critical in controlling the spread of the Ebola virus in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo. Its latest update reported 111 cases of Ebola, with 83 confirmed and 28 probable, including 75 deaths.

The WHO reports it is continuing to rapidly scale-up its response to the Ebola outbreak in North Kivu and Ituri provinces, including in Oicha, a town difficult to reach because of security concerns.

More than 100 armed groups are operating in these areas, putting some places, known as Red Zones, off limits because of the dangers. But, WHO spokesman Christian Lindmeier told VOA health workers have had access to all places they need to go with the help of MONUSCO, U.N. peacekeepers acting as escorts.

“Between Beni and Oicha there is a Red Zone,” he said. “Oicha, itself is not a Red Zone, but also getting to Oicha is possible with the help of MONUSCO, and we are very thankful for that.”

Oicha is believed to be surrounded by Ugandan Islamist militias, who are blamed for a series of killings and abductions.

Lindmeier said the next week is critical in efforts to prevent Ebola from spreading to areas that cannot be reached.

“The quicker we can respond and in which we can get to people, to talk to them about how to protect themselves, how to prevent infection, how to deal with infected family members and loved ones, the better it is for any future control,” he said. “So, the earlier we get to any place where this outbreak could possibly reach, the better.”

The World Health Organization said 4,130 people have been vaccinated against Ebola, including 726 health care or frontline workers and more than 900 children. It noted more than 7,000 additional doses of vaccine have been transported to Beni and more doses are in route to DRC from the United States.
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Julia Flores Colque still sings with joy in her indigenous Quechua tongue and strums the five strings of a tiny Andean guitar known as the charango, despite a recorded age of almost 118 years.

In her long life, she has witnessed two world wars, revolutions in her native Bolivia and the transformation of her rural town of Sacaba from 3,000 people to a bustling city of more than 175,000 in five decades.

Her national identity card says Flores Colque was born on Oct. 26, 1900, in a mining camp in the Bolivian mountains. At 117 and just over 10 months, she would be the oldest woman in the Andean nation and perhaps the oldest living person in the world.

But a spokeswoman for Guinness World Records says she’s not aware of receiving any application for her and Flores Colque doesn’t seem to care that her record hasn’t been confirmed. She hasn’t even heard of the reference book.

These days, she enjoys the company of her dogs, cats and rooster. She is lucid and full of life, and she loves a good cake and singing folkloric songs in Quechua to anyone who comes to visit the dirt-floor adobe home she shares with her 65-year-old grandniece.

“If you would have told me you were coming, I’d have remembered all the songs,” she said jokingly while playing the diminutive guitar. She then dipped a finger into a cake, and smiled while she licked the frosting.

“She’s always been active, easygoing and fun,” said the grandniece, Agustina Berna.

Growing up, the now-centenarian herded sheep and llamas in the Bolivian highlands until she moved in her teenage years to a valley, where she began selling fruits and vegetables. The produce became her main source of sustenance, and she still maintains a healthy diet though she does indulge in the occasional cake and glass of soda. She never married and has no children.

The previously world’s oldest person, a 117-year-old Japanese woman, died earlier this year. Nabi Tajima was born on Aug. 4, 1900. Her passing apparently leaves Flores Colque as the world’s oldest living person.

Birth certificates did not exist in Bolivia until 1940, and births previously were registered with baptism certificates provided by Roman Catholic priests. Flores Colque’s national identity card, however, has been certified by the Bolivian government.

Her longevity is striking in Bolivia, which still has one of South America’s highest levels of mortality, according to the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean, the U.N.’s regional arm.

The Sacaba mayor’s office has named Flores Colque a living heritage. The office and a private foundation have improved her home, building a brick path where she walks, and a shower and toilet with a railing so the centenarian can safely make her way to the bathroom at night.

Sitting in the sun on a rustic bench, she seems eternal or like an ancient statue carved in stone. She is hard of hearing, but she remains sharp and scolds her smallest dog whenever Blanquita tries to venture out into the street.

Just a few years ago, she still walked briskly. But then she fell and hurt her back. The doctor said she would never walk again. She proved the doctor wrong.
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Indonesia produces an estimated 1.3 million tons of plastic every day, much of which ends up in the oceans, clogging the ecosystem and killing wildlife. Last year the country pledged to cut the amount it throws into the sea by 70 percent by 2025. As Jack Hewson reports, the sea itself could help to solve the problem.
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President Emmanuel Macron suffered a major political blow Tuesday as his popular environment minister resigned live on radio — without informing the French leader beforehand.

Nicolas Hulot, one of the most respected members of the Cabinet among the French public, took even his interviewers by surprise on the France Inter radio station when announcing his move.

“I am taking the decision to leave the government,” Hulot said, adding that he felt “all alone” on environmental issues within the government.

The 63-year-old TV celebrity, who made his name as an environmental campaigner, was lured into government last year by Macron, but has repeatedly clashed with his cabinet colleagues over policy.

“We’re taking little steps, and France is doing a lot more than other countries, but are little steps enough?… the answer is no,” he added.

Hulot, whose future in the government has been a subject of speculation for months, said he had not informed Macron or Prime Minister Edouard Philippe of his plans to resign.

“It’s an honest and responsible decision,” he added.

His departure adds to mounting problems for 40-year-old centrist Macron, who swept to power in May last year promising to solve decades of low growth and high unemployment in France and reform the European Union.

Due to slowing economic growth, his government is having difficulties drawing up the 2019 budget which saw Prime Minister Philippe announce at the weekend that he was dropping targets for reducing the deficit.

At the diplomatic level, Macron is struggling to convince his European partners of the need for a more integrated EU as nationalist governments make gains across the continent.

Over the summer, the former banker also suffered the first major political scandal of his 15-month term when a senior security aide was filmed manhandling protesters while wearing a police helmet.

Anger in government

Hulot’s announcement is likely to be received bitterly by Macron, who was starting a trip to Denmark to sell his EU agenda on Tuesday.

“The most basic of courtesies would have been to warn the president of the republic and the prime minister,” government spokesman Benjamin Griveaux told the BFM news channel.

Hulot was formerly the star presenter of the hit Ushuaia environmental TV programme in France and had repeatedly turned down offers to enter government by previous French presidents.

He was widely reported to be close to quitting in February after media reports that the granddaughter of former French president Francois Mitterrand had accused him of rape in the 1990s.

Hulot furiously denied the claims and said they had been extremely hurtful for him and his family.

He had also faced criticism from fellow green campaigners, who accused him of failing to influence the Macron government sufficiently after he lost battles with his colleagues in the agriculture and economy ministries.

Hulot was left disappointed when the government backtracked on a target to reduce the share of nuclear power in the country’s energy mix to 50 percent by 2025, while EU negotiations on pesticides were another source of frustration.

On Monday, the cost of a hunting licence was cut in half to 200 euros — another bitter pill for the vegetarian.

“Do you do an environmental revolution in one year? The response is no,” government spokesman Griveaux added. “I prefer little steps to not moving.”

Macron’s record on the environment is mixed.

He has made the battle against global warming one of his foreign policy priorities, organizing a major conference in Paris last year in an effort to compensate for Trump’s scepticism about climate change.

He also led efforts at the EU level to reduce the use of the controversial weedkiller chemical glyphosate and he scrapped a proposed airport in western France, partly on environmental grounds.

Macron’s political opponents immediately seized on the resignation.

“I don’t necessarily share the same opinions as Nicolas Hulot, but I can understand that he feels betrayed today, like a lot of French people, by the strong promises that were made and the sense that in the end they have not been kept,” said Laurent Wauquiez, the head of the rightwing Republicans party.

 

 

 
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