Brazil will take a forest fund proposal to COP28 – 11/24/2023 – Environment

The Brazilian government will take to the COP28 climate summit a proposal to create an international fund for the conservation of tropical forests around the world, in a model similar to the Amazon Fund, Ambassador André Corrêa of the Lago, Brazil’s chief negotiator at the summit.

“It is a conceptual proposal with a view to creating a fund that favors the conservation of tropical forests around the world. There are forests in 80 countries”, said the ambassador.

The Brazilian proposal, prepared by the Ministries of Finance, Environment and Foreign Affairs, was presented to the ACTO (Amazon Cooperation Treaty Organization) countries by Minister Marina Silva, this Thursday, as an initial idea, not yet fully designed.

According to Corrêa do Lago, the proposal will be a kind of “international Amazon Fund”, to raise funds from sovereign wealth funds in different countries to preserve forests.

“It is a proposal that will be presented at a side event [evento paralelo] at the COP and will still be improved. But it will be a “bottom up” proposal [de baixo para cima]. It is the countries with tropical forests that will contribute to perfecting this proposal, so that it truly becomes a formal initiative”, he explained.

Created during the second term of President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva (PR), in 2008, the Amazon Fund raises international donations to finance actions to preserve the Amazon, such as sustainable development activities in the region.

Initially with contributions from Norway and Germany, the fund has been receiving promises of new contributions since Lula returned to government this year. In October, R$30 million was allocated from Switzerland and R$15 million from an initial donation from the United States, bringing the total to R$3.4 billion.

Two other international funds have already been created for environmental purposes, one for the protection of biodiversity and the other to compensate nations affected by the destruction caused by climate change, in addition to the promise of rich countries to make US$100 billion annually in climate financing available to poor and under development.

There is still no estimate of the amount of resources that the new fund can raise, but, in the ambassador’s assessment, it could be “a lot of money”, directed towards an objective that currently has little funding, which is not cutting down forests.

The idea is to pay for forest maintenance, which does not fit into current carbon market concepts. More than carbon sequestration, the idea is mainly to prevent new emissions.

The ambassador said that forest conservation has no “additionality” — that is, it does not provide carbon credits and, therefore, requires another type of financing. In this case, instead of carbon sequestration units, the calculation will be per hectares of preserved forest.

“Brazil considers forest conservation to be extremely important. However, as forest conservation cannot provide carbon credits, forest conservation must have another type of financing, such as the Amazon Fund”, he stated. “That for us is just central.”

During COP28, the government will also present a series of proposals for the conservation and recovery of forests and degraded lands. One of the programs aims to finance producers to transform degraded pastures into crops using sustainable agriculture.

Another front will be to present Brazilian projects to recover deforested areas on public lands, conservation units and indigenous lands, in natural recovery projects, concessions and agroforestry projects.

Brazil will also take to COP28 a program to recover deteriorated and unproductive arable areas, Roberto Perosa, Secretary of Commerce and International Relations at the Ministry of Agriculture and Livestock, told the press.

“We carried out a study and detected around 160 million hectares in pasture areas. Of these, around 40 million are in degraded pasture areas, with high suitability for agriculture”, he stated.

In ten years, the government intends to invest US$120 billion (R$587 billion, at current prices) and expand the Brazilian agricultural area from 65 million to 105 million hectares, without deforestation.

“We are going to carry out the expansion without cutting down any trees. These are anthropized areas [alteradas pela ação humana]but with a certain level of degradation due to non-optimized management by rural producers”, explained Perosa.

According to the secretary, currently, the private sector recovers around 1.5 million hectares every year. The government intends to accelerate the restoration of these areas through financing from BNDES, the Brazilian Sovereign Fund and Banco do Brasil.

1.5˚C

Another strong position that the Brazilian government will take to COP28 is the defense that the increase in the earth’s temperature cannot exceed 1.5°C in relation to pre-industrial levels, a target that is already viewed with skepticism by several entities .

Corrêa do Lago stated that for Brazil this is an essential position because, above all, the risk of “points of no return” in climate change are extremely high and directly affect the Amazon — and, with it, the entire world.

“It’s still possible [ficar em 1,5°C]. As much as the chances each year may be decreasing, what we know today is that exceeding 1.5°C will be a disaster, so we have to insist”, he stated. “If you have the ‘tipping point’ [ponto de não retorno] in the Amazon, it will have an impact on Brazilian agriculture that is absolutely gigantic, it will have an impact on the way of life of the population in most of Brazil. So we have to do everything to avoid ‘tipping points’.”

Studies show that an increase in temperature on Earth, combined with deforestation in the region, could transform the largest tropical forest in the world into a cerrado, which would affect the temperature, the rainfall regime and all agriculture in the country and would influence much of the world.

The Brazilian delegation for COP28, led by Lula, will leave for Dubai on the night of October 28th. At least ten ministers must accompany Lula, in addition to the presidents of the Chamber, Arthur Lira (PP-AL), and of the Senate, Rodrigo Pacheco (PSD-MG).