Germany announced on Monday that it was ready to commit a total of 200 million euros to the preservation of the environment in Brazil, including the Amazon, on the sidelines of the visit to Brasilia by Chancellor Olaf Scholz, the first Western leader received by the new President Lula.
” It is a large sum ” and “ we will continue (to cooperate) in this direction “, declared Olaf Scholz in a press conference after his meeting with the Brazilian president, according to the official translation into Portuguese. ” We have a big goal in common, which is to advance climate protection, to protect the Amazon rainforest, and this is only possible through cooperation added the German Chancellor.
Germany wants to contribute “with Brazil to the preservation of forests” after these difficult years said Economic Cooperation Minister Svenja Schulze during a press conference with the new Brazilian Environment Minister, Marina Silva. She was referring to the four years of President Jair Bolsonaro’s mandate (2019-2022) during which deforestation in the Amazon broke records.
Germany has already announced at the beginning of the year that it would once again top up the Amazon Fund, to the tune of 35 million euros, after the freezing of the fund in 2019 due to the controversies over the environment of the mandate of Bolsonaro. Berlin will also grant 31 million euros to the Amazonian states of Brazil for “ projects for the protection and sustainable use of forests added the Minister, also announcing a low-interest loan of 80 million euros to help farmers reforest their land.
Other projects announced include a German contribution to a fund for energy efficiency guarantee for small and medium-sized enterprises and two projects for sustainable supply chain “. Berlin also wants to finance a project of “ development of renewable energies, in industry and transport » and, finally, a program of « reforestation of degraded areas “.
All these projects, including the already known contribution to the Amazon Fund, total some 200 million euros, the German ambassador to Brazil said on Twitter.