The team of Brazil’s president-elect Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva has begun talks with various foreign governments to expand the number of donors to the Amazon environmental protection fund.
Lula’s Cabinet has assured that negotiations are underway to involve countries such as Switzerland, France or the United Kingdom in the Amazon Fund, reports the newspaper ‘Folha de S.Paulo’.
The governor of Pará, Helder Barbalho, has maintained that he has had meetings on the subject during the COP27 summit in Egypt.
«I had a meeting with France, which gave a positive signal (to donate to the fund). And we even had information, as a result of a meeting we had there (in Egypt), that the United Kingdom is also positive (about it),» Helder explained to the newspaper.
Helder added that raising funds for climate investments in a generalized way should be one of the axes of the environmental policy of the new Executive.
These contacts on the part of the Brazilian transition cabinet are due to the fact that the Fund was paralyzed in 2019 during the administration of former President Jair Bolsonaro, at which time the international donors – Norway and Germany – announced the freezing of transfers.
Bolsonaro, then, decided to extinguish the two governing bodies of the fund, the Steering Committee (Cofa) and the Technical Committee (CTFA). In addition, the figures in the deforestation records increased, compared to previous years.
Added to this is the anti-environmental rhetoric of Bolsonaro, who is accused of being a climate denier. For this reason, after Lula’s victory, international donors signaled their intention to collaborate again with the fund.
«I am pleased to inform you that shortly after our victory in the October 30 elections, Germany and Norway announced their intention to reactivate the Amazon Fund to finance environmental protection measures in the world’s largest rainforest,» Lula declared during the UN climate summit in Egypt.
