Washington (EFE).- The president of the United States, Joe Biden, will ask the US Congress to approve a disbursement of 500 million dollars for the Amazon Fund of Brazil, reported the White House.
In addition, the country will donate one billion dollars to the Green Climate Fund, an instrument of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), which aims to mobilize climate financing for developing countries.
Biden made these two announcements in his speech at the start of the Forum of the Major Economies on energy and climate, an initiative launched by Barack Obama during his Presidency that the current president recovered upon reaching the White House. Since then, four meetings of the forum have been held with it.
The time we have to act is tight
“The time frame we have to act is narrow,” warned the US president when defending his request for funds from the US Congress for the Amazon.
He also explained his $1 billion donation to the Green Fund because advanced economies, he said, must “step up” and help developing countries, where the impact of climate change is greatest even though they have contributed less to it. provoke it.
On the other hand, Biden stressed the need to strengthen the role of multilateral financial institutions, “starting with the World Bank”, in the fight against climate change.
“Climate, energy and food security are related. I call on the multilateral banks to expand their credits” aimed at climate change, which “will also accelerate the fight against poverty,” said the president.
This Thursday’s event is intended to “accelerate progress in four areas necessary to keep within reach a limit of 1.5 degrees Celsius of warming,” the White House said in a statement.
Stop deforestation in the Amazon
These four areas are the decarbonization of energy, the cessation of deforestation in the Amazon and other critical forests, the reduction of polluting emissions in addition to CO2, and the promotion of carbon capture and management technologies.
Biden encouraged countries whose goals for 2030 are not aligned with the objective (of 1.5 degrees) “to come to COP28 in Dubai with an aligned goal,” a high-level official from the Ministry explained in a call with journalists. Democrat Administration.
In addition to the request for funds for the Amazon Fund, which the president already advanced in February after his meeting with the Brazilian president, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, the US Development Finance Corporation announced that it is working on an investment package of 50 million dollars for the Restoration Strategy of the Brazilian bank BTG Pactual.
This project seeks to restore some 300,000 hectares of degraded land in Brazil, Uruguay and Chile, mobilizing investments worth one billion dollars. Half of the land will be permanently protected while the other half will be used to cultivate sustainable forests.
This will make it possible to capture some 35 million tons of carbon over the next 15 years, according to the White House.
The president also encouraged participating countries to adopt measures to reduce polluting emissions from transportation and power generation to zero, as well as reduce the amount of compounds that are harmful to the environment, such as methane or hydrofluorocarbons, which are produced .
Biden also defended investments in carbon capture technologies, which would make it possible to mitigate part of the polluting emissions that are already unavoidable, and will ask countries to adopt commitments in view of COP28 in this area.