Norway is ready to resume payments to Brazil to prevent deforestation in the Amazon if there is a change of government in October’s elections, as opinion polls suggest, the Nordic country’s environment and climate minister said.
Brazilians will vote to choose a new president, and leftist leader Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva has a 16 percentage point lead over far-right incumbent Jair Bolsonaro, according to a June 8 poll.
Between 2008 and 2018, Norway paid US$ 1.2 billion (R$ 6.18 billion) to the Amazon Fund, which finances Brazil to prevent, monitor and combat deforestation, being by far the largest donor. Deforestation rates declined during this period.
But the fund was frozen after destruction rates in the world’s largest rainforest soared under Bolsonaro, who took office in 2019 and weakened environmental protection, saying agriculture and mining in the Amazon reduce poverty.
“If it’s like the research shows and there’s a change [de governo] in Brazil, we have high hopes that we can quickly resume a good and active partnership,” Norwegian Minister of Climate and Environment Espen Barth Eide told Reuters in an interview.
“What they said, on the opposition side, was very positive,” he said, adding that work on the fund could be resumed “very quickly”, in a matter of “weeks or months”, “as long as the opposition does what say you will.”
Brazil’s Ministry of the Environment did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Wednesday (22).
Former environment minister Ricardo Salles, skeptical of climate change, had criticized the management of the Amazon Fund in 2019, making unspecified allegations of irregularities in awards given to non-governmental organizations.
Norway said at the time that it was satisfied with the way the funds were being managed, effectively dismissing those criticisms.
The Amazon Fund currently holds about US$3 billion (R$15.45 billion), according to NGOs. Once up and running, the fund is expected to be used to restore the environmental governance that Bolsonaro dismantled, said Marcio Astrini, executive secretary of the Climate Observatory, an umbrella group representing 65 Brazilian green NGOs.
For example, “the money should be used to fund local and federal police field operations to combat environmental crimes,” such as illegal mining and logging, Astrini said.
Later, payments to the fund should once again be based on Brazil’s effectiveness in containing or slowing deforestation, in setting incentives to protect the Amazon, said Anders Haug Larsen, head of policy at Rainforest Foundation Norway.
* Collaborated with Gram Slattery, in Rio de Janeiro
Translated by Luiz Roberto M. Gonçalves
