Climate change: Amazonia in negotiation: Bolsonaro asks for 10 billion dollars a year to stop its destruction | Climate and environment

The Amazon, a tropical rainforest crucial to regulating the temperature of the planet, is seeking a space at the top that President Joe Biden celebrates this Thursday to formalize the return of the United States to the battle against climate change. Brazilian Jair Bolsonaro is one of 40 leaders summoned to a virtual meeting which will be broadcast live on the Internet. Bolsonaro is under strong internal and external pressure as deforestation is at levels not seen for 12 years and its environmental policy encourages impunity. Amazonia governors, environmental NGOs, businessmen and opponents are looking for the Democrat’s complicity to save the Amazon.

Preparations for the summit are being followed with great anticipation in Brazil, which is home to most of the Amazon. Some because they feel the pressure of the new administration; others because they are convinced that it contributes to a change of course in environmental policy.

The American president proposed during an electoral debate to raise 20,000 million dollars to preserve the Amazon, to which Bolsonaro responded in a bitter tone. But now the Brazilian government is trying to take the gauntlet to raise funds abroad to pay for the fight against deforestation. A deal that the two countries have been supposed to negotiate for months has so far failed to materialize.

Bolsonaro published a letter sent to Biden last week in which he pledged to eliminate illegal deforestation by 2030 (which Brazil already pledged in 2016) and offers to move the deadline forward to achieve neutrality. decade (2060 to 2050) if you receive financial assistance. US climate envoy John Kerry responded in a tweet: “We look forward to immediate action and the involvement of indigenous peoples and civil society.”

The director of the Open Society Foundation in Latin America, Brazilian Pedro Abramovay, regrets that Biden’s goals of greening his country’s politics and economy are much more ambitious than those he asks of his Latin partners. Americans, as he explains in a video call. . Abramovay fears that “Colombia will be presented as the advantageous student (in the environment) even now with glyphosate”, of which President Iván Duque intends to resume use.

The Amazon lost last year, it lost 11,088 square kilometers of trees, 9.5% more than the previous year. The deployment of thousands of military personnel has not been able to stop this increase in illegal logging at a high economic cost. And while inspectors on the ground are becoming increasingly rare.

Brazil has been an admired environmental powerhouse for years. But that ended the increase in deforestation from 2012 and culminated with Bolsonaro and his measures against environmental law enforcement. So far, the president has resisted countless pressures to change Environment Minister Ricardo Salles, responsible for specifying how much money Brazil is asking for. He is demanding a blank check for 10 billion dollars per year to eliminate greenhouse gases by 2050. Of this amount, he would devote one billion per year to the fight against illegal deforestation, as he explained. in several interviews.

The United States has now joined the demands the European Union has made of Brazil to deliver tangible results. The signs are grim. The Amazonas police chief who confiscated the largest shipment of allegedly illegal timber has just been shot after a fight with the minister.

Greenpeace, other NGOs and dozens of opposition MPs expressed in a public letter their concern that the United States “will give confidence to a government bent on climate denial and which considers the Amazon and those fighting for its climate. conservation as enemies “.

The head of the Open Society maintains that “the solution is to include in the negotiations (environmental between Brazil and the United States) other actors such as the consortium of governors of the Amazon”, with reference to the group chaired by Governor Flávio Dino de Maranhão.

Many in Brazil and abroad see Bolsonaro and Salles’ promises as a simple public relations operation to ease the pressure on the environmental front at a time when the country is suffering significant damage from the health crisis and the Senate has created a commission of inquiry to analyze how the government is handling the pandemic.

This week’s summit is seen as the prelude to the UN climate summit (COP26) to be held in Glasgow in November. Abramovay warns “that there is no possible climate agreement without the Amazon”. He refers to scientists’ warning that if deforestation continues at this rate, the forest may reach the tipping point where it becomes a savannah. Then “it would stop playing the role it plays in regulating the temperature of the planet, which would affect the gigantic efforts of the United States and China.”

The Bolsonaro government is now calling for an instrument that resembles the millionaire fund that has contributed for years to the fight against deforestation and that Salles buried when he took office. The Amazon Fund funneled millions of contributions from Norway and Germany under the supervision of Brazilian institutions to government and civil society approved projects until it was neutralized.

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