Germany has pledged to help defend the Amazon rainforest after years of serious devastation under Brazil’s former far-right Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro.
The announcement was made at a news conference in Brasilia on Monday, where German Development Minister Svenja Schulze said his country would make $38m available for the Amazon Fund, an international mechanism largely funded by Norway that aims to prevent deforestation.
Recall that Germany and Norway freeze their donations in 2019, following Bolsonaro’s decision to dissolve the steering committee that selects sustainable projects to finance. However, the German minister said that Brazil’s new government offers a ‘great chance’ to protect rainforests after widespread destruction.
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“With the new government and the team of [Brazil’s] President Luiz Inacio 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 was quoted to have said regarding the new funding.
Apart from the funds to defend the Amazon rainforest, Germany also pledged to provide $87m in low-interest loans for farmers to restore degraded areas and $34m for Brazilian states in the Amazon region 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,” Brazil’s president, Lula was quoted to have said during the news conference.
Following his re-election in October 2022, Lula pledged to fight for “zero deforestation” in the Amazon, as deforestation in the Brazilian section of the rainforest rose 150 per cent in December from the previous year, according to government figures, to 218.4sq km (84.3sq miles) of destroyed forest cover.
This new fund, if properly managed, will go a long way in ensuring that the Amazon remains protected as the rainforest is critical to the global fight against climate change.
Story was adapted from Al Jazeera.
