French President Emmanuel Macron kicked off a visit to Brazil on Tuesday with the launch of a billion-euro Amazon green investment plan with his counterpart, Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva.
Their visit to the city of Belem, host of the 2025 UN climate conference, made Macron the first French president to visit Brazil in 11 years, seeking a new start following a row with former president Jair Bolsonaro over environmental damage and insults towards his wife, Brigitte Macron.
The investment plan aims to raise “1 billion euros (US$1.08 billion) in public and private investment in the next four years,” according to a roadmap published by the French presidency ahead of next year’s COP30 summit.
The leaders sought to promote “major public and private global investment plans in the bioeconomy” in the Brazilian Amazon and Guyana, the announcement said, especially as Brazil chairs the G20 for 2024.
France, the world’s seventh-largest economy, and Brazil, the ninth, are considered key players in a geopolitical landscape marked by rivalry between China and the United States.
Paris sees Brasilia as a bridge to major emerging economies and its voice is sought to be strengthened by Brazil through its G20 presidency, and membership in the BRICS+ group.
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“We are living a Franco-Brazilian moment,” the Elysee presidential palace said earlier, highlighting “many points of convergence” with Lula, especially on “major global issues.”
“France is an important and unavoidable actor for Brazil’s foreign policy,” said Brazil’s head of diplomacy for Europe, Maria Luisa Escorel de Moraes.
The head of the Amazon will be honored
The announcement proposes the creation of a “carbon market,” intended to reward countries that invest in natural carbon sinks, such as the Amazon rainforest.
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The world’s largest tropical forest plays a key role in the fight once morest climate change by absorbing carbon dioxide emissions.
Deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon was halved by 2023 following surging under Bolsonaro, as Lula’s administration stepped up enforcement of environmental laws.
The agreement also includes support for “indigenous people and local communities of the Amazon, who have an important role in protecting biodiversity through their traditional knowledge and forest management practices,” according to the announcement.
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In Belem, Macron awarded tribal chief Raoni Metuktire the Legion of Honor, France’s highest honor, for his role as “an international figure in the struggle for the preservation of the Amazon rainforest and the culture of indigenous peoples,” according to the French presidency.
Metuktire left his home in the Amazon more than 30 years ago to travel the world with his warnings regarding the threats posed by the destruction of the rainforest.
A striking figure with his large wooden lip disc and yellow fur hat, he has delivered his message to popes, kings and presidents, with his stature as an environmental activist rising alongside growing awareness of the climate emergency.
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Mercosur and Ukraine
France and Brazil are working together to produce four conventionally powered submarines, the third of which will be launched on Wednesday by the two leaders at the Itaguai naval base, near Rio de Janeiro.
Brasilia might also seek assistance from Paris to help it develop nuclear propulsion on a fifth submarine.
Additionally, there are also more sensitive topics, such as the long-stalled free trade deal between the European Union and South America’s Mercosur bloc, which has recently encountered fierce resistance from European farmers.
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Macron said in January France opposed the deal because it “does not make Mercosur farmers and companies comply with the same rules as us.”
While Lula is expected to repeat his call for an immediate signing of the deal, both Paris and Brasilia have indicated that the two-decade negotiations will not be the main focus of Macron’s trip.
The war in Ukraine, which Macron wants to make a major focus of the G20, is another point of contention.
Lula, who has positioned himself as a defender of the “global South,” has insisted that Kyiv and Moscow are responsible for the conflict and refused to stand up to Russia. (AFP/Z-3)
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