Brasilia (EFE).- The president of the European Commission, the German Ursula von der Leyen, announced that the European Union will grant 20 million euros (about 21.5 million dollars) for the Amazon Fund after meeting in Brasilia with the president from Brazil, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva.
The senior European official, who began a tour of several Latin American countries in the South American giant, highlighted Lula’s leadership in climate issues and his fight to end deforestation in the biome before 2030.
“Europe is your partner and we have a responsibility to stop deforestation,” he said in a statement to the press after meeting with the Brazilian president.
In this sense, Von der Leyen recalled that there is currently a project of 430 million euros to combat the devastation of the forest and promote sustainable land use in the biome.
The Amazon Fund, created in 2008, worked until 2019. C, when the now far-right ex-president Jair Bolsonaro decided to deactivate it, amid the promotion of policies that boosted mining and other economic activities in the region.
Lula, who assumed power on January 1, repealed these policies on his first day in office and determined the reactivation of the Fund. To which new donors such as the United Kingdom, the United States and now the European Union have joined, in addition to Norway and Germany. Countries that have financially supported the initiative since its creation.
The destruction of the Brazilian Amazon
A report released today by the scientific platform MapBiomas ensures that in 2022 11,926 square kilometers (an area the size of Qatar) of jungle were destroyed in the Brazilian Amazon, which is equivalent to 58% of all deforested vegetation in the country.
According to MapBiomas calculations, the Brazilian Amazon lost an average of 21 trees per second last year.
The president of the European Commission will continue her tour this Tuesday in Argentina, where she will meet with the president of that nation, Alberto Fernández.
He will then travel to Chile and Mexico, where he will also meet with the leaders of those countries.
Von der Leyen was scheduled to have made the trip in April. But he had to postpone it because of Lula’s visit to Beijing, where he met Chinese President Xi Jinping.