The unprecedented scale of the fires ravaging Brazil’s Amazon rainforest underscores the failure of science diplomacy, according to Klaus Schuch, scientific director at Austria’s Centre for Social Innovation.
Schuch authored a recent European Commission report that calls for a more prominent role for science in international diplomacy and for greater cross-border collaboration on research and innovation policy.
In light of the Amazon rainforest’s importance to the global climate, the G7 nations offered $22 million (€19.9m) in aid to help fight the fires earlier this week, with German chancellor Angela Merkel calling the Amazon the “lung of our whole Earth”.