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French President Emmanuel Macron began his visit to Brazil on Tuesday by launching a billion euro Amazon green investment plan with his counterpart Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva.
The pair’s visit to Belém, the northern host city of next year’s major UN climate change summit, makes Macron the first French president to visit Brazil in more than a decade, following a stop in nearby French Guiana. .
The public event with Lula, held on the jungle island of Kombu, was filled with smiles and affectionate gestures, underscoring the sharp reversal in relations since his first term as president. Jair BolsonaroLula’s predecessor was a far-right figure.
The former president clashed with Macron’s government over environmental destruction and even hurled insults at the French first lady. Brigitte Macron.
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. There is.
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 seventh largest economy, and Brazil, the ninth largest economy, are seen as important players in a geopolitical scene marked by conflict between China and the United States.
Paris sees Brasilia as a bridge to emerging powers, where Brazil is seeking to increase its voice through its G20 presidency and membership in the BRICS+ group.
“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 were awarded~
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.
According to the announcement, the agreement also includes support for “indigenous peoples and local communities in the Amazon who play an important role in protecting biodiversity through their traditional knowledge and forest management practices.” That’s what it means.
In Belem, President Macron awarded France’s highest honor, the Légion d’Honneur, to tribal leader Laoni Métectile.
“I wanted to say that we will continue to fight alongside you,” a “fight” for the forest and its people, Macron told the leaders.
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.”
Mr Lula is expected to renew his call for the deal to be quickly signed, but both Paris and Brasilia said the first negotiations in 20 years will not be the main focus of Macron’s trip, which includes talks in the Brazilian capital on Thursday. He expressed his thoughts.
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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