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BELEM: Brazil and France on Tuesday launched an investment program to invest 1 billion euros ($1.1 billion) in private and public funds over the next four years to protect the Amazon rainforest in Brazil and Guyana.
The announcement was made during French President Emmanuel Macron’s three-day visit to South America, where he arrived in Belem, near the mouth of the Amazon, on Tuesday and was greeted by Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva.
“Gathered in Belém, in the heart of the Amazon, we, the Amazonian countries Brazil and France, have decided to work together to promote an international roadmap for the protection of tropical forests,” a joint statement said.
The two countries’ pledge to work together to stop deforestation in the Amazon by 2030 to help limit global warming comes two years before Brazil hosts the COP30 climate change talks in Belem in 2025. Announced.
“The two presidents have expressed their commitment to the conservation, restoration and sustainable management of the world’s tropical forests, and are committed to an ambitious agenda, including the development of innovative financial products, market mechanisms and payments for environmental services. We agreed,” the statement said.
Macron and Lula traveled by riverboat to visit a sustainable development project for chocolate production on an island near Belém, where they met with indigenous leaders.
At the ceremony, President Macron awarded France’s highest award, the Legion d’Honneur, to Kayapo indigenous leader and environmental activist Raoni Metukutile, in recognition of his fight to protect the rainforest and the rights of indigenous peoples. He was praised for doing so.
Raoni, who, along with musician Sting, became a global figurehead on election campaigns in the 1980s, handed President Macron a letter condemning the environmental impact on indigenous peoples of a railway project backed by soybean farmers. He said indigenous peoples were not freely consulted.
Mr. Raoni asked Mr. Lula not to approve the construction of a 1,000-kilometre (620-mile) railway known as Ferrograo, which would reduce agribusiness costs for transporting grain from the Mato Grosso farm state to Amazon river ports and international markets. .
Despite past clashes over environmental issues, relations between France and Brazil hit a low in 2019, when President Macron led a wave of international pressure against then-President Jair Bolsonaro over the raging fires in the Amazon. recovered from the point. Bolsonaro accused Macron and other G7 countries of treating Brazil like a “colony”.
“We are in the process of resuming bilateral relations and our strategic partnership with Brazil after four years of eclipse and de facto freezing of political relations between our countries during the Bolsonaro presidency,” a French presidential adviser said on Friday. said.
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