Fires can't spread in Amazon rainforest because it is 'wet', says Bolsonaro

Brazil President Jair Bolsonaro speaking at the United Nations General Assembly on Tuesday said that his country was the target of a "brutal" and "shady" international campaign.

Also Read: As fires burn, Bolsonaro says Brazil should be congratulated for its 'environment work'

"The Brazilian Amazon is known to be immensely rich. That explains the support given by international institutions to this campaign anchored on shady interests coupled with exploitative and unpatriotic Brazilian associations with the purpose of undermining the government and Brazil itself," Bolsanoro said.

Bolsoanro said that the fires could not spread in the Amazon rainforest because it is "wet."

The Brazilian president's remarks come as Amazon has witnessed record fires in the Pantanal, the world's largest tropical wetlands. Bolsonaro, in fact, blamed the indigenous people in the Amazon for the fires at the rainforest.

"The fires practically occur in the same places, on the east side of the forest, where peasants and Indians burn their fields in already deforested areas," Bolsonaro said while attacking the media for "politicising" the pandemic.

Bolsanoro said Brazilian agriculture feeds one billion people in the world and it has the best environmental legislation. "And yet we are the victims of one of the most brutal campaign of misinformation about the Amazon and the Pantanal," he said at the UNGA.

However, Greenpeace hit back saying: "Bolsonaro's denialist rhetoric, even as the country burns, is a disgrace to the Brazilian people and isolates Brazil from the world."