Classically-trained pianist, rock drummer and leader of the rock group X Japan, Yoshiki has pledged $100,000 to Earth Alliance’s Amazon Forest Fund, to help combat the raging forest fires in the Amazon.
“The Amazon fires deserve the world’s attention,” said Yoshiki stated in a press release. “I want to encourage people in every nation, including Japan, to take action.”
As one of the most biodiverse regions on the planet, the Amazon produces large amount of ecological resources necessary to produce oxygen, and serves as the home to a variety of different plant and animal life forms. Researchers have explained that if 20 percent more of the Amazon burns up, that the region will no longer be able to survive as a rainforest and can turn into a savannah, permanently reshaping the region’s ecology.
According to researchers, the Amazon has been afflicted by nearly 80,000 fires this year alone, which is an 80 percent spike in fires compared to 2018. Many have blamed this jump on deforestation and a practice called slash-and-burn, both issues are ones that the current president of Brazil, Jair Bolsonaro has failed to address.
“These are intentional fires to clear the forest,” Cathelijne Stoof, coordinator of the Fire Center at Wageningen University (WUR) in the Netherlands stated in an interview with The Verge. “People want to get rid of the forest to make agricultural land, for people to eat meat.”
In a move that upset numerous world leaders including the Prime Minister of France, Emmanuel Macron, Jair Bolsonaro refused around $20 million in aid from G7 countries to help combat these fires. He has since stepped slightly back from that position, and has been in talks to accept aid from the United Kingdom to fight these fires.
Read our previous coverage of Yoshiki’s performance at the grand house opening in Los Angeles here.
Photo Credit: Raymond Flotat
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