As President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva of Brazil paid a visit to Buckingham Palace today, the Greenpeace forest football squad were there to remind him that the world has a vested interest in the future of the Amazon rainforest.
Greenpeace volunteers held a silent vigil on The Mall as President Lula, in Britain on a state visit, passed by with The Queen. Rain failed to stop play and the protesters wore Brazilian soccer shirts, a poignant reminder that in a football-crazy nation like Brazil, an area of rainforest the size of five football pitches is lost every minute in the Amazon (many more fields' worth will have disappeared by the time you finish reading this page).
To make the message clear, the volunteers unfurled, a huge banner saying 'God Save the Amazon' in full view of the royal procession while other activists held placards carrying the same message in English and Portuguese.
Greenpeace protester Belinda Fletcher said: "I came down here today to let Lula know that people across the globe are watching what he does in the Amazon. When the rainforest is set ablaze by giant agricultural interests or cleared by illegal loggers, it's lost forever."
Since he came to power in January 2003, Lula has presided over an unprecedented level of deforestation with nearly 70,000km sq km of rainforest being cleared (an area the size of the Republic of Ireland) being lost on his watch. Between August 2003 and July 2004, a staggering 27,200km sq km were cleared, the second highest level ever recorded.
An area the size of Eire lost since 2003
Illegal logging and cattle ranching are still encroaching on the Amazon rainforest, but increasingly the large-scale cultivation of soya is to blame for the destruction. And it's not just the forest that suffers. Soya farmers often force indigenous peoples off their land before bringing in the bulldozers to clear and then burn the forest. The use of slaves to clear the land has also been reported.
It's true that Lula has taken some positive steps to protect areas of the rainforest and root out illegal loggers and corrupt officials, resulting in a drop of 30 per cent in the rate of deforestation between 2004 and 2005. But such is the scale of the devastation that these achievements only bring deforestation rates back in line with the average over the last ten years.
There is reason to hope but only if Lula puts his country's greatest natural resource at the top of his agenda and takes firm action to protect it for future generations.
"If Lula does the right thing," said Fletcher, "there's still a chance to save the Amazon rainforest and develop an alternative, more environmentally responsible model of development for the world's most important rainforest. If he doesn't, current rates of destruction mean we could lose the entire Amazon rainforest in the next three or four decades."
There's no extra time on this one - Lula must safeguard the future of the Amazon rainforest now, before it's too late.
