BRAZIL SAYS WELCOMES FOREIGN MONEY FOR AMAZON
09.12.08 - Leído 16 veces. Enviar esta notaRaymond Colitt
Brazil’s environment minister on Wednesday fought off charges that a new international Amazon conservation fund set to receive a large contribution from Norway could threaten the nation’s sovereignty
BRASILIA, Brazil; September 12, 2008.- Nationalist politicians and media have warned that foreigners donating to the Amazon Fund, which Brazil unveiled last month, might try to impose their own agenda on Latin America’s largest country.
“Not all donors think of themselves first,” Environment Minister Carlos Minc told a seminar on public policies in the Amazon sponsored by the Roman Catholic Bishops’ Conference.
Norway is set to make a US$100 million donation next week during a visit to Brazil by Norwegian Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg, an environment ministry spokesman said.
Other countries are looking into making contributions.
“We think it is an interesting Brazilian initiative and we are studying it closely,” Anders Turesson, climate change negotiator with the Swedish government, told Reuters.
“Climate change problems will require a large financial commitment from developed countries,” he said during a visit to Brazil on Wednesday.
Deforestation, which is accelerating in the world’s largest rain forest, accounts for 20 percent of greenhouse gas emissions from human sources, according to UN data. Warming can stoke droughts, heat waves, more powerful storms and rising seas.
Asked whether the growing presence of foreign farmers and non-governmental groups in the region was cause for concern, Minc responded: “Today, those who destroy the Amazon are Brazilians.
Nationalists, especially in Brazil’s military and intelligence circles, have long harbored conspiracy theories that foreigners are scheming to take Amazon resources.
The Amazon Fund will support forest conservation, scientific research and sustainable development projects such as rubber tapping, forestry management and the creation of drugs from plants.
Brazil’s national development bank BNDES will manage the fund, Minc said. The government hopes to raise US$1 billion within a year and as much as US$21 billion by 2021, the bank said last month.
Some potential donor governments have said they would have too little say in the management of the fund, which is open to companies, countries and non-governmental organizations.
“It’s certainly an issue we have to look at,” said Turesson.
(Reuters)
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