bolivia's president has welcomed what he called the small offer of financial aid, from the g7 group of world leaders, to help fight the fires in the amazon. brazil's president has said he won't accept aid unless the french president withdraws remarks jair bolsonaro has taken as insults. a succession of women have voiced anger and defiance in a manhattan courtroom — telling their stories of sexual abuse by the late financier — jeffrey epstein. one woman said he had shown the world what a depraved and cowardly human being he was by taking his own life. purdue pharma, the us pharmaceutical giant that makes the opioid oxycontin, is reported to be offering between ten and 12 billion dollars to settle thousands of lawsuits against it. it follows a judge—ordered payout from johnson and johnson — for their part in the opioid crisis. now on bbc news, hardtalk.

can the west african state of gabon save its environment? welcome save its environment? to hardtalk. i am stephen sackur. welcome to hardtalk. i am stephen sackur. our planet is haemorrhaging natural resources at an alarming rate. biodiversity is under threat as forests are felled, wild animals illegally hunted. my guest today is on the frontline of the effort to c0 nse rve on the frontline of the effort to conserve and what remains. lee white is the newly appointed environment minister in the west african state of gabon. a country famed for its tropical forests, elephants and gorillas. but also notorious for systemic corruption and inequality. so can gabon find a sustainable balance between the needs of man and nature?

theme music plays. lee white, welcome to hardtalk. you first went to gabon as a research zoologist. you became an environmental campaigner and here we sit with you as a government minister, ministerforthe environment in gabon. how did you get seduced, if i may use that word, into the murky world of politics? conservation is about people, not about wildlife, really. if people aren't involved, leave the gorillas

and elephants to look after themselves and they will be just fine. leave the forests to grow and they will be fine as well. in a planet where people are turning out carbon dioxide and the amazon is starting to burn and coaches are coming in and decimating wildlife, it is dealing with people that is the difficult part of conservation and dealing with people is politics. —— poachers. and dealing with people is politics. -- poachers. i am guessing with your background as a zoologist and a man who spent a lot of time out in the field and in nature, often pristine nature, iam field and in nature, often pristine nature, i am guessing that perhaps you didn't actually like dealing with people that much. yes, i started as a antisocial biologist and my first five years in gabon, i barely came out of the forest so i barely came out of the forest so i barely met anybody over the year as i went from being a zoologist to a botanist to an archaeologist and

that started to bring me towards people bit more. and then at a point there was a choice, do i keep on studying the forests and the wildlife while they disappear? or do i move wildlife while they disappear? or do imove in wildlife while they disappear? or do i move in to a much more active conservation role. you felt it was as urgent as that? absolutely. if you look at the way the planet is going and the way africa's wildlife is going, it is a crisis. some people do manage to just keep studying. but i couldn't do that. lot of people won't know gabon. it isa lot of people won't know gabon. it is a relatively small country in terms of population. i know it is fairly sizeable but fewer than 2 million people on the atlantic coast of africa. why gabon for you? you had no connection there. as a i ologist i was looking for the place where i would see the gorillas and the elephants and the chimpanzees and the wildlife ——as a zoologist.

something like it before humans had high—powered rifles and started eliminating everything. it really was drift in a way, i decided to do a phd, a route to all of the eminent scientists around the world who were studying how forestry impacts wildlife which is the subject i decided to study and i got one letter back and it was from a british woman who had been in gabon for about ten years. the railway had opened up the rainforests of central gabon to forestry and caroline wrote back to me and said come along, we really need to understand what the impact of this increased pressure on the forest is going to have. by 2009, a decade ago, you had been appointed to be the chief, the boss, of the gabon national parks agency. a very, very sizeable operation. there are 13 national parks in gabon. something like two—thirds or more of the country is covered in forest. you have a big territory...

it was a big job, yes. you have talked about the pressures, that the balance between man and nature, how, in thatjob, did you preserve the forest, even that one of the key industries in gabon is derived from logging and timber trade? you have to go back a little bit in the story. in 2002 i met omar bongo who had been president of the country for a long time. for over 40 years. yes. an african dictator, i don't know if you will quarrel with that. i would quarrel with that. i will call him an african chief. dictator isa call him an african chief. dictator is a very hard and negative word. he was president in a 1—party system for 20 years and then he was the

president in a multi—party system with elections and he won the elections and when he died, i was actually in a climate change negotiation when he died and i headed back to gabon. when i got to gabon, the queue to pay respects in front of his coffin went three times around the presidential palace and they had had to open the gates because they just couldn't they had had to open the gates because theyjust couldn't reel with the numbers of people. —— they couldn't deal. i think dictator is unfair. we will revisit your relationship with the ruling family later, because it is important, and it is politics and now you are a senior and important minister in the government in gabon. of course congo family still rules gabon. but i want to come back first of all to forestry. it seems to me it is a

very important test case of what you have tried to achieve in your career. explain to me, given that we know that gabon is systematically corrupt, there is endemic corruption in gabon, and we know that illegal logging is a lucrative business. how you as director of national parks, tried to fight that. when omar bongo created the parks system, there was forestry in all the protected areas of gabon. and arbon was going the way of ivory coast. ivory coast today has 3% of its forests left. 80% of its parks have been deforested. when we showed omar bongo beautiful national geographic photographs of the national treasures of gabon, something clicked. a spark, a catalyst went

off. within a couple of months we had created 13 national parks. preserving some of the most beautiful and the richest parts of gabon. the president of france at the time came and tried to convince omar bongo that it was a bad decision. the french had big logging interests in gabon. and the biggest critics of the park were the fo reste rs. critics of the park were the foresters. —— parks. the first thing he did was ban the export of raw, unprocessed timber and within two months president sarkozy was in gabon trying to convince him he had made the wrong decision and it was a mistake. what omar bongo did was try to shift it in africa. britain, china, the us, have all been developed on cheap, raw materials

from africa. and if going to develop african countries, if we are going to find the balance between the preservation and the sustainable use of these natural resources, at least a good proportion of the wealth that comes from the exploitation of those natural resources has to come back into africa and so the reason that i ami into africa and so the reason that i am i guess a government minister as well as a conservationist today is to find that balance, you can't do conservation in isolation, you are pa rt conservation in isolation, you are part of a system. to come back to my point about how prepared you are to ta ke point about how prepared you are to take on vested interests which are undermining the efforts you and others have made in the country to preserve and protect, i'm very mindful, for example, that he use it

as environment minister, your predecessor was sacked because of a scandal involving the illegal cutting down and trading of precious timber to the tune of some say hundreds of millions of dollars. some of this timber was found in containers inside arbon. the vice president ended up losing hisjob over this —— gabon. i'm suggesting to you that yourjob is going to involve you taking on some very powerful vested interests. involve you taking on some very powerful vested interestslj involve you taking on some very powerful vested interests. i have been doing that for years in gabon. i have been fighting the illegal ivory trade when you are dealing with event terrorists groups. we have only had two cases of illegal forestry inside the park. i have been fighting illegal gold. between those illegal industries, i was dealing with maybe 300— $400 million

of turnover and some very unpleasant organisations and people. and we managed to do it. one of the reasons we managed to do it is because i had very strong support from the president himself. but the question, partly, is whether you have been successful and i should say, the two politicians you have always denied their involvement in this would scandal but they have nevertheless lost theirjobs. it involves the trading of ivory because many people will know that gabon has one of the most important populations of forest elephants in the world. gabon has 10% of africa's forests and today, tragically, we have 60% of the forest elephants because they have disappeared everywhere else. my point is, despite your vet — make best efforts, and you have just pointed out how committed you are, i'm looking at figures here. —— best efforts. i am looking at data from

scientists. in the 1980s, gabon had between 60 and 65,000 forest elephants and today 25,000. we have about 45,000. we don't like to give that figure very often because we think it might attract the poachers. evenif think it might attract the poachers. even if you take the optimistic figure, you have lost what? i'm a scientist, it is not an optimistic figure. i'm one of the world experts on forest elephants. if you have a look at any of the publications, we certainly do have, we have 60% of the 90 - 95,000 certainly do have, we have 60% of the 90 — 95,000 forest elephants that are surviving. we lost 25,000 forest elephants in a gabon between 2006 and about 2012 — forest elephants in a gabon between

2006 and about 2012 - 13-14. forest elephants in a gabon between 2006 and about 2012 — 13—14. we think it could be directly related to the decision in 2006 to allow illegal trade of ivory and there is a big debate going on right now as to whether or not we should once again allow countries to sell ivory. that sent a signal to the poachers and actually with the gold price going up around the world almost exponentially, ivory and gold exploiters moved into the forests of gabon and the government wasn't ready. that was a failure. it was a failure of the gabonese government and for the conservation community. the government didn't have a national park service at that point and all the conservation money was going to international ngos. we all failed, collectively. i see your

response was interesting for w decided, in essence, to declare this a war. you exponentially increased the number of park rangers. —— your response was interesting. you decided. you became paramilitary and turned biologists into military, police officers and spies.|j turned biologists into military, police officers and spies. i never thought that was going to be my path in life. is it working, that is the question, is it working? those elephants are still there. those parks are intact. we are moving out of the parks, causing good governments of the natural resources outside of the parts. there is the strong motivation to establish natural resource governance. we are realising, everyone, if we don't get it right we will end up like the central african republic, where, for

example, 35 years ago it was a tropical paradise like gabon, and the poachers moved in from the north, from chad, sudan, they killed the rhinos and then they killed the elephants and they killed the big game and then they killed the small game and then they killed the small game and then they killed the small game and then they became bandits, robbers, rebels. there's a very clear link between natural resource governance in africa and peace and security. and so... and clean governance, too. exactly. if you plot a graph of elephant numbers against some measure of good governance although corruption, you get almost a straight line. what about two other things that you have specifically said you believe can be helpful. one is more tourism. you have sorta blown the trumpet forgetting more visitors into gabon, which, again, may seem counterintuitive to a commitment to protection and conservation, and

secondly, palm oil. you seem to be a big fan of expanding palm oil operations in gabon. we need to develop our country. we have a raising population. we are a country that has been, for a long time, living on an oil based economy. and, as you see the amazon forest burning on the news, you realise that there isn't a future for oil based economies with climate change stop and so gabon has to diversify its economy. oil palm isjust a and so gabon has to diversify its economy. oil palm is just a fact of life. it is the most productive oil producing plant that you can grow in the tropics. but it does suck up, as we have seen in countries like indonesia, last track of virgin forest. it comes down to management. where do you do oil palm? do you do oil palm integrated areas, and savannah areas? or do you do it in pristine rainforest. in gabon we

have a national plan that only allows oil palm in the most graded habitats. and motorists, with more roads, and more flights coming, all the infrastructure that comes with hotels and everything connected with the leisure and tourism business, thatis the leisure and tourism business, that is all good for this protected areas? again, it is a matter of management. if you look at botswana, where people tend to fly, rather than drive, and you do hi and low throughput tourism, when you are giving people qualityjobs, and tourism is a quality thing for natural resource governments. if you don't control it, if you'll ever get out of hand, anything, whether agricultural, forestry... what you keep coming back to is the need for responsible governance, for clever and responsible government. why should we believe, even though you have now joined the should we believe, even though you have nowjoined the government, that gabon is capable of that sort of

governance, given that, right now, the president, your boss, is, according to many in your own country, incapable of fulfilling his job. we believe he had a stroke late last year. he is rarely seen in public. you are one of the last people seem pictured with him in public. let us get your view. it is president ali bongo ondimba fit to govern your country? he is. weakened by his stroke. he is walking like an old man, if you saw the images of him at the independence day. mentally he is... i will say. it is interesting. the french side of his brain is 100%. he has lost a little bit of his english. so he is totally fluent and with it in french, but his english has suffered slightly.

so he is... he is definitely there and he is definitely in charge. so no question for you, he is fit to govern? he is fit to govern, yes. even in the deeper sense of a man who has been accused by, again, many people in his own country and many outside of being part of a kleptocratic state regime, going back to his father, who govern for more than 40 years, we know from the french investigation that the family have vast assets are stored away abroad, much of it in paris and in france, including a whole fleet of luxury vehicles, the us senate reported on the movement of $100 million in what they regarded as suspect transactions, you are happy to sit in that government? i'm proud, actually, to be a government minister in gabon. i think what we are trying to do in gabon is to create a new vision for africa... do you, do you sit and think about this sort of details i have mentioned in

the nature of the... sort of details i have mentioned in the nature of the. .. of course i have. but you are presenting it in a very... biased way. you are citing that small proportion of 100% negative opposition politicians who a lwa ys negative opposition politicians who always betray these things... no, i'm actually citing french authorities and the us authorities, the world bank which went out that despite its being a major oil producer, at least one third of the gabonese people live in poverty today. there is massive inequality in that country. there is. ijust wonder when you sit in the government that you can deliver what you want to deliver given the climate in which you have to operate. i've been working in gabon for over 30 years. i've been gabonese for about 15 years. i've

been through some quite tough negotiations over time and i've dealt with some very difficult situations. and i've come through that. in a system where we genuinely are trying to get it right, in a system where we really do have these national parks which are well—managed, where we have more and more forestry concessions which are well—managed and are certified, where the economy is more and more balanced, in a system where iwork for, you betray him in a very negative way, but iwork for a very remarkable president who is one of the most intelligent human beings i have ever met and has always supported me to do myjob —— i work

for. let me ask you one last simple but perhaps very difficult question. if you want to do things which president ali bongo doesn't want you to do, there's only going to be one winner it won't be you. that's the nature of politics in that country. how far nature of politics in that country. howfarcan nature of politics in that country. how far can you go push your commitment, do you think, before you run into trouble yourself? we will see. i'm... ilike run into trouble yourself? we will see. i'm... i like to think that i'm somebody who has integrity. that's why i have been... you called yourself incorruptible why i have been... you called yourself incorru ptible ones. why i have been... you called yourself incorru ptible oneslj why i have been... you called yourself incorruptible ones. i am not sure i would say that. —— once. i'll have to be. i'm not sure i would say it myself, just because you never know in life where life is going to take you. but if we have a difference of opinion we will talk about it. and if it is irreparable,

andi about it. and if it is irreparable, and i feel that i about it. and if it is irreparable, and ifeel that i can't about it. and if it is irreparable, and i feel that i can't continue about it. and if it is irreparable, and ifeel that i can't continue in the government, then obviously i would leave the government. but knowing the amount iwork four, i don't see that happening. i didn't ta ke don't see that happening. i didn't take the decision lightly two months ago to leave the national parks and become a minister, to become a white politician in a black african country —— i work for. they believe they can do a lot of good for the country, for its parks and wildlife, but more importantly, in a way, i'm the minister of forests, of the environments, and of climate change, and the difficult part of myjob, really, is the climate change and the oceans, ocean pollution and so on. because their little gabon has to try to move the entire international community towards taking action. dealing with

corruption in the forestry sector of gabon with full support from the president shouldn't take more than 3- president shouldn't take more than 3— six months. president shouldn't take more than 3- six months. we have to when there. lee white, it has been a pleasure having you on hardtalk ——we have to end there. thank you very much. thank you. hello, once again. it's time we got you right up—to—date with how we see the rest of the week developing right across the british isles, and the rest of the week is certainly going to be marked by quite a considerable change for some parts, in that it will be cooler, wetter and windier and, for that change, we have to thank a frontal system which has been lurking away towards the north—western quarter of the british isles in recent days.

itjust hasn't managed to get across the british isles simply because of the presence of the high pressure that has brought the heat from the continent, particularly to easter areas. but wednesday sees this weather front producing some really quite heavy bursts of rain across the southwest, through wales, and then to the midlands, on towards the north—east of england, during the latter part of the afternoon. and there the temperature profile — no more the 33, it's closer to 23 or 24 as a high, and cooler than that across northern and western parts, where at least there will be a bright end to the day. but come thursday, we'll be looking again towards the atlantic to see progress of more atlantic weather fronts into northern and western parts of the british isles. so it's wet and windy fare for the western side of scotland, through to northern ireland, too. generally speaking, quite a bit of cloud across england and wales, but a lot of dry weather. and again, that temperatures just about pushing to 23 or 24 at best, on notable south—westerly breeze. from thursday on into friday, we're just going to follow the line

of the front back into the atlantic. a little ripple in that weather front thickens the cloud, and eventually another pulse of pretty wet weather gets into the western part of scotland, initially, then right across scotland, through northern ireland, into the northern parts of england and maybe just flirting with the north—western quarter of wales. again, thanks to the influence of a bit of a high—pressure, the south should be that wee bit drier. friday on towards the weekend, we've still got that same weather frontjust weaving its way across the british isles but, once that front has made its way down and across us, notice how those colours really begin to drain away, and here we are into the yellow hues, with a touch of blue there, creeping into northern and western parts of the british isles. a taste of autumn, dare i say it, just in time for the meteorological start of autumn on sunday. so saturday sees the progression of that weather front ever further towards the south — slow progress there. so south—eastern parts may well stay dry for a good part of the day. but once the weather front completes its journey, then we're into a north north—westerly flow, hence that chillier feel right across the piste, and it will be a day marked by sunny

spells and showers and, as i say, meteorological autumn arrives with a bang.

welcome to bbc news, my name's mike embley. our top stories: bolivia calls for co—operation to fight the wildfires raging through the amazon rainforest. but indigenous people across the region fear for the future. women who say they were sexually abused by the american financier jeffrey epstein tell a court they're angry he died in prison and avoided justice. another leading pharmaceutical company is saying it will pay out over the opioid scandal in the us — with an offer of up to $12 billion. a new deadline for italy's political parties. they're to report to the president on wednesday, but an early election is still possible.