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- The governor of Brazil's Amazonas state wants Jeff Bezos to pay royalties for using the Amazon name.
- He posted a video on Instagram addressing Bezos, from the perspective of the Amazon rainforest.
- "If your company is the most valuable of all, I would say I am priceless," said the video.
The governor of Brazil's Amazonas state is asking Jeff Bezos to pay royalties for using the rainforest's name for his company.
Wilson Lima told Brazilian news outlet O Globo: "Amazon uses the name of Amazonas, uses the name of Amazonia. How much do we get for this? We want to know."
Lima said he intended to raise the issue at the COP28 climate summit being held in Dubai.
The politician also took his message to Instagram, sharing a video addressing Bezos from the perspective of the Amazon rainforest: "You deliver millions of products and have the largest logistics park in the world. And me? I clean the air for the whole planet and I have the world's largest biodiversity and rainforest."
"If your company is the most valuable of all, I would say I am priceless, And since you use my name and I've never earned anything from it, I invite you to come here to get to know better, Jeff," said the narrator, in Portuguese.
The Amazon rainforest is sometimes called the earth's "lungs" because it absorbs vast amounts of carbon dioxide, a greenhouse gas that contributes to global warming.
It also contains 10% of the world's known animal species and the Amazon biome covers about 2.5 million square miles, or roughly nine times the size of Texas.
Deforestation has resulted in the loss of nearly a fifth of the rainforest over the last 50 years, according to the World Wildlife Fund.
Bezos' net worth jumped $64 billion this year to $171 billion, making him the world's second-wealthiest person, per the Bloomberg Billionaires Index. The company he founded, which is valued at $1.5 trillion, was named after the Amazon river.
The billionaire founder contributed $10 billion in 2020 to his Bezos Earth Fund to tackle climate change. In June, the fund teamed up with Leonardo DiCaprio to launch a $200 million initiative for protecting the Amazon rainforest.
On Saturday, Brazil unveiled a new $205 million fund to preserve the Amazon rainforest at the COP28 summit.