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An agreement was signed between the Legal Amazon Consortium and the Coalition for the Reduction of Carbon Emissions through Forest Finance (known by the acronym LEAF). The goal of this coalition is to stop deforestation by helping to financially support large-scale tropical forest protection.
By 2021, LEAF mobilized $1 billion in public and private funding.
On Friday (5) the governor of the state of Pará, Helder Barbalho, arrived at COP 26 representing the group of nine states that make up the Legal Amazon. The Secretary for the Environment of Pará, Mauro O'de Almeida, met with the UK Minister for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, George Eustice, to discuss an agreement to receive part of the 1.5 billion pounds that the British government has set aside to invest in combating deforestation worldwide.
"From a strategic point of view, the minister said that the UK wants to support subnational states especially the Amazon. We presented him with a green recovery plan including forest restoration, combating deforestation, and bioeconomy. And before, we had a meeting with an investment agency also from the UK and they opened the doors for us to make investments in green infrastructure", said Mauro O' de Almeida, who added that 300 million pounds are already reserved by the British government for Amazonia within the South American continent.
Governor Helder Barbalho also recalled that the Amazon Fund, administered by the federal government, has been paralyzed since 2019.
"It is essential to recompose bridges. In 2019, we governors of the Legal Amazon made several meetings with ministry and with embassies of Norway, the United Kingdom and Germany to try to return the dialogue and to show that there were good intentions. Unfortunately, the intensification of this process led to a freeze. Since then, there has been no new procedure that puts us in the horizon of a near expectation. This fund was responsible for several programs and we still have active programs that are prior to 2019 and that are fundamental. Pará was the state that received the most resources from this fund. To give you an idea of what we got from the resources that make up the Amazônia Agora (state) Plan for inspection and monitoring was from the Petrobras Fund coming from the Lava Jato," said Barbalho.
This story was originally published in Portuguese in CNN Brasil on November 6, 2021. It was produced as part of the 2021 Climate Change Media Partnership, a journalism fellowship organised by Internews' Earth Journalism Network and the Stanley Center for Peace and Security.
The goal of this coalition is to stop deforestation / Credit: Adriana Freitas.
