Monitoring Desk
ISLAMABAD/BRASÍLIA: Germany outlined more than 200 million dollars in contributions for an environmental project in Brazil.
German Chancellor Olaf Scholz visited the South American giant reeling from Amazon destruction under former president Jair Bolsonaro.
The package includes a brand-new 33.6 million dollars in aid for Brazilian states for rainforest protection, on top of another 38 million dollars already announced for the Amazon protection fund to which Norway and Germany had halted payments under climate-skeptic Bolsonaro.
Protection of the Amazon
Protection of the Amazon, a crucial sink for planet-warming carbon dioxide, was high on the agenda for talks between Scholz and Brazil’s leftist new President Luiz a that aimed to “deepen the resumption of ties,” according to the Brazilian presidency.
Scholz, the first German chancellor to visit Brazil since 2015 and the first Western leader to meet President Lula since he became president on January 1, 2023, after four years of frosty ties with Brazil under far-right Bolsonaro.
German chancellor Scholz’s arrival in the capital Brasilia, Svenja Schulze, German economic cooperation minister, announced her country would make additional aid available for Amazon preservation after “difficult years.”
“Brazil is the lung of the globe. If it has issues, we all have to help it,” Schulze said at the press conference in Brasilia with Lula’s new Marina Silva, the environment minister.
Bolsonaro’s four-year term was marked by the surge in blazes and clear-cutting in the rainforest.
According to government figures, the average annual deforestation on his watch rose by 59.5 % from the previous four years and 75.5% from the previous decade.
