‘I promised to come to your forest’: Macron honours tribal chief, reveals $1.6b plan to protect the Amazon

Sao Paulo: The Brazilian and the French presidents have announced a plan to invest €1 billion ($1.66 billion) in the Amazon, including parts of the rainforest in neighbouring French Guiana.

The two countries’ governments said in a joint-statement the money would be spread over the next four years to protect the rainforest. It will be a collaboration of state-run Brazilian banks and France’s investment agency. Private resources would also be welcomed.

French President Emmanuel Macron, from left, Brazil’s President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva and Chief Raoni Metuktire, in Brazil on Tuesday.Credit: AP

French President Emmanuel Macron and his Brazilian counterpart Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva are meeting this week to revive the bilateral relationship after years of frictions with Lula’s predecessor, Jair Bolsonaro, and deepen cooperation to protect the rainforest and boost trade.

Macron started his three-day visit to Brazil in the Amazon city of Belem, where he met Lula, a long-time ally. He then took a boat to the Combu island to meet with Indigenous leaders.

Both Macron and Lula saw a protest by Greenpeace Brazil with banners that read “No oil in the Amazon”. The Brazilian government has contemplated allowing the tapping of oil in a region close to the Para state, where Belem lies.

“Gathered in Belem, in the heart of the Amazon, we, Brazil and France, Amazonian countries, have decided to join forces to promote an international roadmap for protection of tropical forests,” they said in a joint statement.

Deforestation has hit the Brazilian Amazon rainforest.

Their pledge to work together to stop deforestation in the Amazon by 2030 to contribute to slowing global warming.

“The presidents expressed their commitment to the conservation, restoration and sustainable management of the world’s tropical forests and agreed to work on an ambitious agenda, including ... developing innovative financial instruments, market mechanisms and payments for environmental services,” the statement said.

Macron and Lula took a river boat to visit a sustainable development project for producing chocolate on an island near Belem, and met with Indigenous leaders.

At the event, Macron honoured Indigenous leader and environmental campaigner Chief Raoni Metuktire, of the Kayapo people, widely known as Raoni, with the National Order of the Legion of Honour, France’s highest order of merit, for his fight to protect the rainforest and Indigenous rights.

French President Emmanuel Macron, left, embraces Chief Raoni Metuktire after presenting him with the French distinction, the Legion of Honour.Credit: AP

Raoni handed Macron documents denouncing the environmental impact that a planned railway backed by soy farmers will have on Indigenous people, whom he said have not been freely consulted.

Raoni asked Lula not to approve building the 1000-km railroad known as Ferrograo that would lower agribusiness costs for shipping grains from Mato Grosso farm state to Amazon river ports and out to international markets.

“You were in Europe and I promised to come here to your forest and be with your people in this forest that is coveted,” Macron told Raoni, according to French radio RFI. “President Lula and I have a common cause for one of our friends in this land that belongs to you.”

Despite past run-ins over the environment, relations between France and Brazil have recovered from a low point in 2019 when Macron led a wave of international pressure on Bolsonaro over fires raging in the Amazon. Bolsonaro accused Macron and other G7 countries of treating Brazil like “a colony”.

Firefighters work to put out a blaze in the Amazon forest during a drought and high temperatures in Amazonas state, Brazil, last year.Credit: AP

“After a four-year eclipse and a virtual freeze in political relations between our two countries during Bolsonaro’s presidency, we are in the process of relaunching the bilateral relationship and the strategic partnership with Brazil,” a French presidential adviser said on Friday.

Lula said Macron’s visit was part of a global effort to strengthen rainforest protections.

“We want to convince those who have already deforested that they need to contribute in an important way to countries that still have their forests to keep them standing,” Lula said in a speech next to Macron.

Macron’s office said before the trip that a potential European trade deal with the South American bloc Mercosur wouldn’t be on the agenda. The French president is an opponent of such an agreement as long as South American producers don’t respect the same environmental and health standards as Europeans. French and fellow European farmers have been protesting against imports from countries that do not follow the same rules.

Lula and Macron would seek to “set a common course” to fight both climate change and poverty, Macron’s office said. Brazil will host the summit of the G20 leading economies in Rio de Janeiro in November and the United Nations COP30 climate talks in Belem next year.

On Wednesday, Macron and Lula will launch a diesel-powered submarine built in Brazil with French technology at the Itaguai shipyard outside Rio de Janeiro. Macron will then head to Sao Paulo to meet with Brazilian investors. On Thursday, the French president will head to Brasilia to again meet with Lula.

AP, Reuters

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