Scholz visit: Environment: Germany pledges 200 million euros to Brazil

German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, the first Western leader received by the new President of Brazil, arrived in Brasilia in the afternoon and spoke with President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, who took office only on January 1, for this last leg of a Latin American tour that took him to Argentina and Chile.

Germany wants to “contribute” with Brazil to the preservation of forests “after these difficult years”, said the Minister for Economic Cooperation Svenja Schulze, during a press conference with the new Brazilian Minister for the Environment, 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 to Brazil’s Amazon states for “projects for the protection and sustainable use of forests”, the minister added, also announcing a low-interest loan of €80 million. aid for the reforestation of their land by farmers. “Brazil is the lungs of the world. If he has problems, we all have to help him,” said Svenja Schulze.

Other projects announced include a German contribution to an “energy efficiency guarantee” fund for small and medium-sized enterprises and two “sustainable supply chain” projects. Berlin also wants to finance a project for the “development of renewable energies, in industry and transport” and, finally, a program for the “reforestation of degraded areas”. All these projects, including the already known contribution to the Amazon Fund, total some 200 million euros (the equivalent in francs), said the German ambassador to Brazil on Twitter.

Svenja Silva, for her part, felt that Germany was also ready to “open markets for sustainably produced commodities” in the Amazon. Part of the Amazon Fund, created in 2008, could be allocated to “emergency actions” with indigenous communities, she said, such as the Yanomami, who suffer from undernutrition and infectious diseases due to the increase in illegal gold mining activities on their land.

“We are looking for communities that help Brazil fulfill its Paris Agreement commitment to zero deforestation by 2030, expelling invaders from indigenous lands (…) to achieve sustainable development,” he said. Brazilian muse of the fight for the environment.

Olaf Scholz was received in the middle of the afternoon at the Planalto Presidential Palace by Lula. His social democratic party, the SPD, has long-standing close ties with the Workers’ Party (PT) co-founded by Lula in the early 1980s.

Berlin, like other European capitals, hopes to turn the page on stormy relations with Bolsonaro in favor of Lula’s return to power. On the menu of the discussions were to include in particular a return to the rails of the free trade treaty between the European Union and Mercosur – still not ratified since its signature in 2019 – and, in addition to the preservation of the Amazon, the war in Ukraine.

Olaf Scholz is accompanied by a dozen business leaders for this visit to Latin America’s largest economy, and met with big Brazilian bosses in the afternoon.

The EU-Mercosur free trade agreement was never ratified due in particular to concerns about Jair Bolsonaro’s environmental policy. “Our objective is to finally reach a rapid conclusion” of the agreement with Mercosur (Brazil, Argentina, Uruguay, Paraguay), Olaf Scholz had declared in Buenos Aires. Lula and Olaf Scholz were to give a press conference from 6:30 p.m. (10:30 p.m. in Switzerland).

Regarding the invasion of Ukraine, Olaf Scholz should try to obtain the support of Brazil against Russia. It is “very important” to “dismantle Russian propaganda”, it was said in Berlin. Brasilia condemned the Russian invasion of Ukraine at the UN but did not adopt economic sanctions against Moscow.

Lula had even drawn criticism by declaring in December that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky was “as much responsible” for the conflict as Vladimir Putin.