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French President Emmanuel Macron, Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, Brazilian indigenous leader of the Kayapo tribe Raoni Metukutile, and Brazilian First Lady Rosangela Janja da Silva during a meeting on the island of Combes. Brazilian Yanomami shaman and Yanomami spokesperson Davi Kopenawa makes a Yanomami gesture in front of Belem, Para state, Brazil. AFP
French President Emmanuel Macron and Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva launched a billion euro Amazon green investment plan on Tuesday, the first day of their visit.
With his visit to Belem, site of the 2025 United Nations climate change conference, Macron becomes the first French president to visit Brazil in 11 years, and faces Jair Bolsonaro over environmental damage and insults to his wife Brigitte Macron. After an argument with the president, he is looking for a new start.
The investment plan aims to raise “1 billion euros ($1.08 billion) in public and private investment over the next four years,” according to a roadmap published by the French presidential office ahead of next year’s COP30 summit.
The announcement said the leaders aim to advance “a leading global public-private investment plan for the bioeconomy” in the Brazilian and Guyana Amazons, especially as Brazil holds the G20 Presidency in 2024.
France, the world’s 7th largest economy, and Brazil, the 9th largest economy, are considered important participants in a geopolitical situation characterized by competition between China and the United States.
Paris sees Brasilia as an intermediary between developing powers, while Brazil seeks to give developing countries a greater voice through its G20 leadership and membership in the BRICS+ alliance.
“We are living in a Franco-Brazilian moment,” the Elysée presidential palace said earlier, stressing “many points of agreement” with Lula, particularly on “major global issues.”
“France is an essential and inevitable part of Brazil’s foreign policy,” said María Luisa Escorer de Moraes, Brazil’s European foreign affairs chief.
Amazon’s top executives honored
Tuesday’s announcement proposes the creation of a “carbon market” aimed at rewarding countries that invest in natural carbon sinks such as the Amazon rainforest.
The world’s largest tropical forests play a key role in the fight against climate change by absorbing carbon dioxide emissions.
Deforestation in Brazil’s Amazon was cut in half by 2023 as Lula’s government strengthened environmental police after surging under Bolsonaro.
The agreement also includes support for “indigenous peoples and local Amazonian communities who play a critical role in protecting biodiversity through their traditional knowledge and forest management practices,” according to the announcement. That’s what it means.
In Belém, President Macron awarded tribal leader Raoni Métectillet France’s highest honor for his role as an “international figure in the fight for the protection of the Amazon rainforest and indigenous culture,” the French newspaper said. He was awarded the Légion d’Honneur. Presidency.
Metukutile left her home in the Amazon more than 30 years ago to travel the world warning of the threats posed by rainforest destruction.
A striking figure with a large wooden lip plate and a yellow feather headdress, he has delivered messages to popes, royal families and presidents, and his status as an environmental activist is rising as awareness of the climate emergency grows.
Mercosur and Ukraine
France and Brazil are working together to build four conventionally powered submarines, the third of which is scheduled to be launched by the two leaders on Wednesday at the Itaguay naval base near Rio de Janeiro.
Brasilia may also ask Paris for assistance in developing nuclear propulsion for a fifth submarine.
There are also more thorny topics, such as the long-stalled free trade agreement between the European Union and South America’s Mercosur region, which has recently been met with fierce resistance from European farmers.
President Macron said in January that France opposed the deal because it would not “make Mercosur’s farmers and businesses abide by the same rules as ours.”
Lula is expected to renew his calls for the deal to be quickly signed, but both Paris and Brasilia have indicated that the 20-year-old negotiations will not be the main focus of Macron’s visit.
The war in Ukraine, which President Macron wants to make a major focus of the G20, is another issue.
Lula, who has positioned himself as a defender of the “Global South,” has refused to take a stance against Russia, insisting that Kiev and Moscow share responsibility for the conflict.
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