U.S. President, Joe Bidenhas landed this Sunday in Rio de Janeiro to participate starting this Monday in his last G20 summitwhich will focus on the fight against the climate crisis and the conservation of the biodiversity of natural treasures such as the Amazon.
But he made an earlier stop in Manausin the heart of the Amazon rainforest, thus becoming thehe first president in the White House to visit the Amazon in a trip with an eminent epicenter in the climate crisis.
“I am proud to be here. The first U.S. president in office to visit the Amazon,” Biden has declared from the Negro River, the main tributary of the Amazon, in Manaus, Brazil.
“The most powerful solutions for combat climate change are all around us: the world’s forests,” he argued at an event where he signed the documentation to declare November 17 as International Conservation Day.
A smaller contribution to the Amazon Fund than offered
Also, Biden announced that the US will increase its contribution to the Amazon Fund to $100 million.an initiative promoted by the Brazilian president, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva.
This amount is less than the $500 million committed by Washington in 2023. over five years, although a White House official who is part of a presidential entourage said that if Trump “comes to the Amazon and sees with his own eyes the drought and what is happening, he may change his mind on climate change” and provide the remaining $400 million of that commitment.
Biden flew over areas of the Amazon affected by deforestation before arriving in Rio de Janeiro and made a statement from the Amazon Museum.
The U.S. president said that he will leave his successor, Donald Trump, a “solid foundation” on which he will be able to continue to develop the green agenda of his governmentbut warned that changes in the energy transition are irreversible.
“Some may want to slow or stop the energy revolution, but no one will be able to reverse it,” Biden said at the Amazon Museum, a botanical garden located in the Adolpho Ducke forest reserve, one of Brazil’s most important environmental sanctuaries.
Biden arrives with the difficult task of talking about the future with the certainty, which worries many of his counterparts, that Trump’s arrival in power in January will reverse many of the policies he has put in place in these four years in office in terms of energy transition, support of Ukraine against Russia or dialogued containment of China.