German premier to announce BRL 172 million for the Amazon Fund – 01/27/2023 – Environment

On his visit to Brazil, next Monday (30), the German Prime Minister, Olaf Scholz, will make official the release of €31 million (R$ 172 million) for the Amazon Fund, informed this Friday (27) Ambassador Kenneth Nóbrega, Secretary for Europe at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

The resources will be divided into two parts, with €10 million (R$55 million) earmarked for bioeconomy projects in the Amazon region and another €21 million (R$116 million) for actions to combat deforestation.

In December, after the confirmation of the election of President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva (PT), Germany and Norway, the main financiers of the Amazon Fund, had already committed to releasing new resources for the fund, with Germany promising to quickly apply € 35 million (R$ 194 million).

The Brazilian government also received positive signals from other potential donors, such as the United Kingdom, who may participate in the fund.

Germany and Norway had frozen the release of resources for the Amazon Fund in 2019, when the government of Jair Bolsonaro raised suspicions of irregularities in the activities of NGOs that received resources from the fund. The then Environment Minister, Ricardo Salles, changed the fund’s management rules without consulting the donors, and the fund has been on hold ever since.

Scholz arrives in Brazil for a one-day official visit on Monday (30), and the release of resources for the Amazon Fund will be the main act of the meeting – the first individual visit by the head of state that Lula will receive after his inauguration .

However, one of the central topics of conversation should revolve around the trade agreement between the European Union and Mercosur, which the president wants to see move quickly. Initially signed in the government of Jair Bolsonaro, the agreement did not go ahead due to the resistance of Europeans to Bolsonaro’s environmental policy.

The Brazilian government wants to take advantage of the pause to revise some points of the trade agreement, seen as excessively beneficial to Europeans, at the same time that it will reaffirm the environmental commitments demanded by Europeans.