The US and Norway will contribute a combined $110mn to Brazil's Amazon Fund to reduce emissions from deforestation and promote sustainable forest management.
President Joe Biden announced the US' $50mn contribution to the fund from the Amazonian city of Manaus on Sunday. He is the first sitting US president to visit the Amazon rainforest. This adds to the $50mn disbursed by the US to the fund earlier this year, Biden said.
Norway will contribute $60mn, citing a 31pc decrease in Amazon deforestation achieved from August 2023-July 2024.
"Brazil's success in reducing deforestation is clear proof of the ambitions and determination of the Lula government," Norway's prime minister Jonas Gahr Store said from Rio de Janeiro.
President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva has pledged zero deforestation by 2030.
Norway was the first country to contribute to the Amazon Fund, which was set up during Lula's first term in 2008. It was suspended in 2019 during the presidency of Jair Bolsonaro, a climate skeptic, and reinstated when Lula returned to power in 2023.
Projects worth a record R882mn ($151.6mn) have been approved so far this year according to Brazil's Bndes development bank, which manages the Fund.
