US President Joe Biden has promised to “use Congress” to fund the security of the Amazon rainforest, after meeting with Brazil’s new president Lula da Silva.
On Friday, Lula visited Dc to satisfy with Biden in the White House. The united states government’s review of the meeting says “the United States announced its intent to utilize [the US] Congress to supply funds for programs to safeguard and conserve the Brazilian Amazon, including initial support for that Amazon Fund, and also to leverage investments within this critical region”.
The Amazon Fund is really a pot of cash administered by the Brazilian Development Bank which is allocated to forest protection projects like small-scale farming and management of forests by indigenous people.
The $1.2 billion fund was suspended under Bolsonaro but revived on Lula’s first day at work. It is funded by Norway and Germany and the UK is considering a donation too. The US has never financially backed it before.
“Significant change”
When running being president in 2023, Biden promised that if elected he would mobilise “the hemisphere and the world” to provide $20bn in public places and money to protect the world’s biggest rainforest.
When he found power, his administration tried unsuccesfully to barter with far-right Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro, who oversaw a spike in rainforest destruction and was hostile to what he claimed was foreign interference in Brazil’s affairs.
In January 2023, left-wing president Lula took power on a promise to finish deforestation by providing more power to environmentally friendly protection agencies gutted by Bolsonaro.
Natalie Unterstell, president of Brazilian think-tank Talanoa Institute, told Climate Home that the US donation towards the Amazon Fund could be “a significant change in how a US deals with climate finance for Brazil as it shifts the resources to Brazilian governance instead of acting via a cooperation agency.”
“It’s quite positive. This is an important gesture and a first step from the outlook during rebuilding the bilateral relationship between your countries. But we'll require a billion-dollar strategy, not really a million-dollar one, to achieve zero deforestation in this decade,” she added.
Limited budget
But the US has a poor record of delivering public climate finance, consistently giving under smaller European economies. The president has to negotiate with Congress over how to spend their budget, gaining the support of 60 of the 100 US Senators and a majority in the home of Representatives.
For the September 2023 to October 2023 fiscal year, Biden asked Congress for $11.4 billion for international climate finance but received only $1bn.
Biden was criticised for not fighting hard enough against Republicans in Congress for your finance. Diana Movius, forest lead at Climate Advisers, told a press briefing a week ago: “In those last minute budget negotiations rich in level folks from both parties and from the administration that finance was likely not prioritised”.
Since then, Biden’s Democrats have forfeit charge of one part of Congress – the House of Representatives – while having just a slim majority within the Senate.
Joe Thwaites, a global climate finance advocate in the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), said this makes it tougher for Biden to get more climate finance as he makes his next budget request in the coming months.
In the October 2023 to September 2023 fiscal year, the Biden administration could give money towards the Amazon Fund by drawing upon money earmarked for international development but, Meyer said, there was lots of competition with this “fairly limited pool of funds”.
Renewed talks
E3G analyst Alden Meyer asserted environmentalists will have to “try to block likely efforts to chop international climate funding”.
But both Meyer and Thwaites said that Republicans have tended to aid tree-planting and tropical forest conservation a lot more than other climate measures.
Biden and Lula decided to re-instate some pot working group on climate change that was placed in 2023 before being disbanded after the year.
The working group will talk about cooperation on topics including fighting deforestation, supporting clean energy deployment, adapting to climate change, making farming more climate-friendly and improving the bioeconomy.
Izabella Teixera was involved in the working group as Brazil’s environment minister between 2010 and 2023. She told Climate Home it had proved helpful, as then presidents Barack Obama and Dilma Rousseff were involved and influenced the talks at the highest level.
