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I’m curious if U.N. has rights to call an emergency meeting and vote to send everything necessary to help to fight natural disaster, given that causes of rainforest extinction might be felt globally ? This is considering situation when Brazil government doesn’t ask for international help ?

Mike
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  • Does the UN have these type of resources? –  Aug 24 '19 at 15:54
  • So, this would be analogous to sending UN peacekeepers, except instead of sending soldiers, participating nations would send wildland firefighters? – divibisan Aug 24 '19 at 17:34
  • Yes, that was the idea - instead of peacekeepers sending personnel that is fit for the occasion. – Mike Aug 24 '19 at 21:25
  • As @KDog mentioned, question implicitly asks if U.N. has these types of resources or if doing so would’ve mean to organize gathering such resources (which I’m guessing is not an easy/fast thing to do). – Mike Aug 24 '19 at 21:27
  • It's probably not such a great idea anyway; the Amazon has been raped quite enough already. – Meir Aug 25 '19 at 15:16
  • I suppose you mean the consequences of rainforest extinction might be felt globally. The causes are manifold; some, like logging and road building, are domestic and are felt only there. Other causes, most prominently climate change, will be felt everywhere, of course; but fighting the fires won't do much against them. (The rain forest does not actively sequester carbon, I think; its mere existence is likely carbon neutral. Burning it will obviously add CO2 to the atmosphere, but it's a one-time effect. Burning all of it is equivalent to the global emissions of only 4 years.) – Peter - Reinstate Monica May 05 '23 at 17:12
  • That that's best avoided is undisputed; 4 years worth of emissions is 20 years at 20% less; we'd be happy to have that. And we want to keep the rain forest for a host of other reasons: The inhabitants, the species, the genetic resources. Depending on your attitude towards systems of living beings perhaps even something like simple respect. I mean we go to great lengths to protect other moons and planets from contamination with our space probes, lest we destroy something unknown; but we bulldoze over our own treasures with zero thought. We tend to not value the familiar. – Peter - Reinstate Monica May 05 '23 at 17:17

2 Answers2

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The closest would probably be that the UN security council would make such a decision (=send help without being requested).

While I guess "technically" a security council meeting would be arranged by "UN", for a non-scheduled one to be called, it would require some country to bring up the urgent matter (fire) to the council. Also, I think that to consider the fire to be in their scope, would be stretching quite a bit their intended domain.

As far as I know, no other UN body could simply make a decision to send help "by force".

Tuomo
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Let's assume that Brazil is actively hostile to such an intervention and would consider it a violation of its sovereignty (because otherwise no problem would exist, and the question didn't need to be asked).

In that case, a firefighting mission is essentially a military mission which would not be covered under the charter of the U.N.

Chapter VII details the procedures and conditions for armed intervention. The conditions are "the existence of any threat to the peace, breach of the peace, or act of aggression" (Article 39). Other chapters discuss "softer" issues like "international peace and security"; a burning rain forest dumping 120 Gt CO2 into the atmosphere could conceivably be considered a threat to security, for example to the citizens of Tuvalu, the 189th member of the United Nations. But such threats only authorize mediation and other actions by the U.N., not a military intervention.

gmauch
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Peter - Reinstate Monica
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