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Latin America

I thank the hon. Gentleman for that intervention. It is interesting to hear what he says about Guatemala, which I confess is a country I do not know a huge amount about. It is unfortunate that often in countries where human rights abuses are rife, women suffer the brunt of them. It is certainly important that our Government should do all they can to encourage the promotion of human rights in Guatemala and other countries. I want to go into more detail about climate change and deforestation. It is staggering to think that nearly 50 per cent. of Latin America—45.9 per cent, to be exact—is forest. That is a higher proportion than occurs in any other region of the world, and, as I mentioned, 20 to 25 per cent. of global carbon emissions come from deforestation there. One might think that avoiding deforestation should be a quick win. It would not require a massive change in technology. However, it is proving very difficult. I am a member of the Environmental Audit Committee, which is conducting an inquiry on deforestation. We recently visited the Congo basin in Cameroon, which is of course on a different continent from the one we are discussing, but gives rise to similar issues. It is difficult for the world community to get the right balance between managing to avoid deforestation while maintaining the rights of local indigenous people who live in the forest. We are not yet anywhere near a robust payment system for the avoidance of deforestation. Brazil announced plans a couple of months ago to reduce deforestation by 70 per cent. in the next 10 years, but that target is not necessarily as high as is needed. Greenpeace Brazil has been critical of it in relation to the level of change that is needed. Indeed, although deforestation had been decreasing in the four previous years, last year it was on the rise again. Biofuels present another environmental issue. There can be advantages to them in reducing deforestation—Brazil produces a huge amount of sugar cane ethanol, which can be a quite good, sustainable biofuel—but when land, and particularly forests, are cleared to grow biofuel crops any environmental benefit is lost. That is why the Environmental Audit Committee, in a report on the issue, called for the Government to halt the rush towards increasing biofuel targets in Europe. The sustainability guarantees were not in place.