Sao Paulo – Germany’s Development Minister Svenja Schulze announced on Monday that the German government will provide €204 million ($222 million) for Brazil’s environmental policy.
Schultz told reporters in Brasilia, the capital, that $38 million of the total will go to the Amazon Foundation. It is the most important international cooperative effort to protect the Amazon rainforest and is mostly funded by Norway. In 2019, former far-right president Jair Bolsonaro, who saw the Amazon as an internal affair, dissolved the steering committee that selects sustainable projects to fund. In response, Germany and Norway froze donations.
“With the new government and the team of President Luis Inacio Lula da Silva and Minister of the Environment Marina Silva, we have a great opportunity to protect our forests and offer new perspectives to the people who live in them.” said Schulze.
Under Bolsonaro, deforestation in Brazil’s Amazon reached a 15-year high as it dismantled environmental protection policies in favor of agribusiness expansion.
Germany has also pledged $87 million in low-interest loans to help farmers restore degraded areas, and $34 million to the state of the Amazon to protect its rainforest.
“Despite all the difficulties, increasing deforestation, land grabs, fires and the dire state of indigenous peoples, we see this as an opportunity to reverse this whole situation,” Silva said at a press conference. .
Lula, who took office in January, has pledged to end all deforestation by 2030. His four-year term will expire in December 2026.
Covering an area twice the size of India, the Amazon acts as a buffer against climate change because its trees absorb so much carbon dioxide, and about two-thirds of the Amazon rainforest is in Brazil. It is also the most biodiverse forest in the world, holding 20% of the world’s freshwater he.
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