Wednesday, June 21, 2017

Norway Warns Brazil that Funds to Safeguard Rainforests at Risk

A cow grazes next to a fallen tree on a tract of deforested Amazon rainforest near the city of Novo Progresso, Brazil July 2, 2013. (Credit: Reuters/Nacho Doce/File Photo) Click to Enlarge.
Norway has warned Brazil that funds to help protect the Amazon rainforest under a billion-dollar program are in jeopardy because more forests are being destroyed, a Norwegian government letter showed on Wednesday.

Brazil's President Michel Temer will meet Norway's Prime Minister Erna Solberg in Oslo on Friday to discuss cooperation including Norway's program to help Brazil's efforts to restrict logging and the clearance of forests by farmers.

Wealthy from producing oil and gas, Norway is the biggest foreign donor to protect tropical forests from Brazil to Indonesia, partly because they are big natural stores of greenhouse gases and help to slow climate change.

The Amazon is suffering a "worrying upward trend" in deforestation since 2015 after "impressive achievements" over the previous decade, Norway's Environment Minister Vidar Helgesen wrote to his Brazilian counterpart Jose Sarney Filho this month.

Norway's annual contributions to an Amazon Fund, to which it has paid $1.1 billion since 2008 based on Brazil's progress in slowing deforestation, were now set to fall, he wrote in the letter seen by Reuters.

"Even a fairly modest further increase (in deforestation) would take this number to zero," he added.

Read more at Norway Warns Brazil that Funds to Safeguard Rainforests at Risk

No comments:

Post a Comment