By Ricardo Brito
BRASILIA (Reuters) – Brazil’s National Development Bank (BNDES) has approved 318 million reais ($65 million) from the $1.3 billion Amazon Fund to set up a security project fighting deforestation and other environmental crimes in the rainforest, a senior official said.
It represents the first major law enforcement effort by the Amazon Fund, backed by four nations and managed by the BNDES, which agreed last month to back the project designed by the justice ministry and run by Brazil’s Federal Police.
Brazil’s government has reduced deforestation significantly this year in the Amazon, which is vital to slowing global warming by absorbing carbon, but illegal loggers and miners still threaten the rainforest with impunity.
Brazil has also stepped up international cooperation with its South American neighbors to combat crime along the vast border areas where smugglers and drug traffickers operate.
“Without us all having the same purpose, integrated, sharing information and intelligence and acting together to strengthen the fight against environmental crimes, we will not move forward,” said Humberto Freire, the Federal Police’s director for the Amazon and environmental crime.
Freire, who will attend the upcoming United Nations Climate Change Conference COP28 in Dubai, said in an interview on Tuesday that it was time to go beyond speeches to actions in the Amazon, which requires funding.
The initial resources from the Amazon Fund will go to buying helicopters and other essential equipment, while setting up an International Police Cooperation Center in Manaus by early next year to liaise with authorities in neighboring countries, Freire said.
The Amazon Fund will make the first disbursement in coming days for the law enforcement project budgeted at 2 billion reais over the next couple years, he said.
Set up in 2008 to promote the preservation and sustainable use of the rainforest, the Amazon Fund received initial donations from Norway ($1.2 billion) and Germany ($89 million). State-run oil company Petrobras donated $7.7 million. Switzerland committed $5.6 million and United Sates $3 million.
Since taking office in January, President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva has made good on a pledge to rein in the destruction of the Amazon under his far-right predecessor Jair Bolsonaro.
Deforestation has fallen by roughly half this year to the lowest rate since 2018, but still remains nearly twice that of a record low in 2012, and far from Lula’s pledge of zero deforestation by 2030.
(Reporting by Ricardo Brito and Anthony Boadle; Editing by Sandra Maler)
