The government of Norway reaffirmed this Wednesday in Brasilia its environmental commitment to the Brazilian Amazon and announced that it will help seek additional resources with other donors to keep the forest standing.
The announcement was made during a meeting that the Brazilian Minister of the Environment, Marina Silva, had with her Norwegian counterpart, Espen Barth Eide, in which they discussed details of the Amazon Fund, a mechanism created by Brazil 15 years ago to help protect the biome. and of which the European country has been the main collaborator.
After the meeting, the minister told the press that a package of 14 sustainable development projects financed with resources from the Fund that had been paralyzed during the Jair Bolsonaro government will have priority.
“We celebrate 15 years of working in the Amazon Fund that Brazil invented (…). we had to stop our work in 2019 due to a change in policies but we are very happy to return to work with President Lula (Luiz Inácio da Silva) and Marina Silva”assured the Norwegian minister.
“We will continue to work closely and in addition to continuing to provide our support, we will mobilize other donors to join (the cause)”he added.
The projects are related to actions to stop deforestation in the biome, promote bioeconomy activities and provide food security and protection to indigenous people, and they are just the beginning of others that will be presented, according to Silva.
In the meeting with the press, the minister reiterated that issues related to climate change are a priority for the current government and said that the country must look towards clean energy, an aspect that was shared by her counterpart.
“We need an energy transition and we must start working on it now”assured the Norwegian minister.
The Amazon Fund was created in 2008 and operated until 2019, when the Bolsonaro government decided to deactivate it, amid the implementation of policies that promoted mining and other economic activities in the region.
Lula, who took power on January 1, repealed these policies on his first day in office and determined the reactivation of the Amazon Fund, to which he now also wants to attract the United States, China and France, among other economic powers.
Currently, the Amazon Fund has about 1,000 million dollars contributed by Norway and Germany, and the expectation is that the United States will join with an initial donation of 50 million dollars.
Source: EFE
Source: Gestion
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