Environment Minister: Brazil must hurry to make up for lost time
Brazil’s Minister of the Environment and Climate Change Marina Silva said that Brazil needs to hurry to recover the time lost in the last years, when environmental policy was not a priority for the federal government.
In an interview to TV Brasil, she said the country will need to seek resources from abroad to resume efforts to preserve the environment. “We will seek philanthropic donations. When I was in Egypt [for the UN conference on climate change, COP27], I met with top representatives of global philanthropy and some of them will come to Brazil to negotiate contribution with resources,” Silva said.
Among the entities interested in cooperating are the Earth Alliance Foundation, chaired by actor Leonardo diCaprio, and the Bezos Earth Fund, created by Jeff Bezos, owner of retail giant Amazon, the minister noted.
The country recently re-opened the Amazon Fund, with donations from other countries to combat deforestation in the region and support research and sustainable production. Germany and Norway are the current partners of the fund, and the UK may be included in the near future.
Minister Silva said the amount in the fund today—BRL 3 billion—will be used in emergencies for management, inspection, and monitoring initiatives. She pledged to attend the World Economic Forum, in Davos, to seek more resources for environmental preservation in Brazil.
The world already sees Brazil differently after the change in government, Silva argued. And even though the environmental policies of the Lula administration have not yet been put into practice, she added, the international community already trusts them.
