Brazil biofuels must respect Amazon: Merkel

By Raymond Colitt

BRASILIA (Reuters) - German Chancellor Angela Merkel urged Brazil on Wednesday to adopt tougher environmental standards in producing biofuels but said rich nations needed to pay up to help protect rain forests and their biodiversity.

Brazil is the world's largest exporter of ethanol, which it derives from sugar cane. Critics say increased production is pushing cattle ranchers and farmers deeper into the Amazon and accelerating the destruction of the world's largest rain forest.

"Biofuels are a way to replace traditional fossil fuels but only if they are produced sustainably," Merkel said in Brasilia when asked about Germany's biofuel imports from Brazil.

"There are statistics that raise concerns about deforestation, the process of displacement between soybeans, beef and the rain forest," Merkel said at a news conference with Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva.

Rich nations also needed to do more to support environmental protection in developing countries, Merkel said. Industrial countries have not lived up to their obligations.

"If we want to be taken seriously here, we need to make the payments and aid we pledged," Merkel said.

Lula said Brazil was the most interested of all countries in protecting the Amazon but that the millions of people living there also had a right to prosperity.

There was a cost for not chopping down trees in the Amazon, he said.