Germany pledges $222 million for Brazil environment, Amazon

Jan 29, 2023, 6:20 PM | Updated: Jan 30, 2023, 8:57 am

Germany's Economic Cooperation and Development Minister Svenja Schulze, right, shakes hands with Brazil's Environment Minister Marina Silva after giving statements to the press in Brasilia, Brazil, Monday, Jan. 30, 2023. (AP Photo/Eraldo Peres)

(AP Photo/Eraldo Peres)

Brazil's Environment Minister Marina Silva listens to a question from the press during a news conference with Germany's Economic Cooperation and Development Minister Svenja Schulze in Brasilia, Brazil, Monday, Jan. 30, 2023. (AP Photo/Eraldo Peres)

Germany's Economic Cooperation and Development Minister Svenja Schulze, right, gives a statement to the press alongside Brazil's Environment Minister Marina Silva, left, in Brasilia, Brazil, Monday, Jan. 30, 2023. (AP Photo/Eraldo Peres)

Germany's Economic Cooperation and Development Minister Svenja Schulze gives a statement with Brazil's Environment Minister Marina Silva, behind, in Brasilia, Brazil, Monday, Jan. 30, 2023. (AP Photo/Eraldo Peres)

Trees lie in an area of recent deforestation identified by agents of the Chico Mendes Institute in Seringal Humaita, in the Chico Mendes Extractive Reserve, in the city of Brasileia, Acre state, Brazil, Thursday, Dec. 8, 2022. (AP Photo/Eraldo Peres)

BY ASSOCIATED PRESS

SAO PAULO (AP) — German development minister Svenja Schulze announced Monday that her government will make 204 million euros ($222 million) available for environmental policies in Brazil.

Of this total, $38 million is a donation to the Amazon Fund, Schulze told reporters in capital Brasilia. It is the most important international cooperation effort to preserve the Amazon rainforest, and is mostly funded by Norway. In 2019, former far-right President Jair Bolsonaro, who considered the Amazon an internal affair, dissolved the steering committee that selects sustainable projects to finance. In reaction, Germany and Norway froze their donations.

“With the new government and the team of President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva and (environment) minister Marina Silva, we have a great chance to protect the forest and to offer a new perspective to the people who live there,” Schulze said.

Under Bolsonaro, deforestation in Brazil’s Amazon reached a 15-year high as he dismantled environmental protection policies in favor of agribusiness expansion.

Germany also pledged to provide $87 million in low-interest loans for farmers to restore degraded areas and $34 million for Amazon states to protect the rainforest.

“Despite all the difficulties, the increase in deforestation, the land grabbing, the fires, the dire state of the Indigenous populations, we see this as an opportunity to reverse this whole situation,” Silva said during the press conference.

Lula, who took office in January, pledged to end all deforestation by 2030. His four-year term ends in December 2026.

The Amazon, which covers an area twice the size of India, acts as a buffer against climate change because its trees absorb large amounts of carbon dioxide, and roughly two-thirds of the Amazon rainforest lies in Brazil. It is also the most biodiverse forest in the world and holds 20% of the world’s fresh water.

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