MANAUS, Brazil (AP) — Joe Biden visited the drought-reduced waters of the Amazon River’s largest tributary on Sunday as the first sitting US president to set foot in the legendary rainforest, as the new Trump administration appears set to scale back the commitment of United States in the fight against climate change.
The massive Amazon region, which is roughly the size of Australia, stores huge amounts of the world’s carbon dioxide, a greenhouse gas that drives climate change when released into the atmosphere. But development is rapidly depleting the world’s largest rainforest and rivers are drying up.
Joined by Carlos Nobre, a Nobel Prize-winning scientist and expert on how climate change is harming the Amazon, and John Podesta, Biden’s climate adviser, the president traveled through the rainforest in his helicopter. Erosion along the road was severe as it passed stranded ships in the Rio Negro River, fire damage and a wildlife refuge. The helicopter flew over the vast meeting place of the Amazon River and the Negro, its main tributary.
Biden will then meet with local and indigenous leaders and visit an Amazon museum to highlight his commitment to preserving the region.
His administration announced plans last year to contribute $500 million to the Amazon Fund, the largest international cooperative effort to preserve the rainforest, financed primarily by Norway.
So far, the U.S. government says it has provided $50 million, and the White House announced an additional $50 million contribution to the fund on Sunday.
“It is important for a sitting president to visit the Amazon. …It shows a personal commitment on the part of the president,” said Suely Araújo, former director of Brazil’s environmental protection agency and public policy coordinator for the Climate Observatory, a nonprofit organization. lucrative. “That said, we cannot expect any concrete results from this visit.”
She doubts that “a single cent” will be paid to the Amazon Fund once Donald Trump returns to the White House.
The new Trump administration is highly unlikely to prioritize the Amazon or anything related to climate change. The Republican president-elect has already said he will again withdraw from the Paris Agreement, a global pact struck to avert the threat of catastrophic climate change after Biden reaffirmed his commitment to the deal.
Trump called climate change a “hoax” and said he would eliminate the Biden administration’s energy efficiency regulations.
Yet the Biden White House on Sunday announced a series of new efforts aimed at strengthening the Amazon and stemming the impact of climate change.
Actions include the launch of a financial coalition that aims to spur at least $10 billion in public and private investment for land restoration and environmentally friendly economic projects by 2030, as well as a $37.5 million loan to the organization Mombak Gestora de Recursos Ltda. to support large-scale planting of native tree species in Brazil’s degraded grasslands.
Biden is also set to sign a US proclamation designating November 17 as International Conservation Day and will highlight in his remarks during his visit that the US is on track to reach $11 billion in spending on funding international climate change in 2024, a sixfold increase compared to 2024. when he began his mandate.
The Amazon is home to indigenous communities and 10% of terrestrial biodiversity. It also regulates humidity throughout South America. About two-thirds of the Amazon is in Brazil and scientists say its devastation poses a catastrophic threat to the planet.
The forest has been suffering for two years from a historic drought that has dried up rivers, isolated thousands of riverside communities and hampered the ability of river dwellers to fish. It also gave way to wildfires that burned an area larger than Switzerland and choked cities near and far with smoke.
When Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva took office last year, he marked a shift in environmental policy from his predecessor, the far-right Jair Bolsonaro. Bolsonaro has prioritized agribusiness expansion over forest protection and has weakened environmental agencies, causing deforestation to reach its highest level in 15 years.
Lula has pledged “zero deforestation” by 2030, although his term ends at the end of 2026. Forest loss in the Brazilian Amazon fell 30.6% in the 12 months to July compared to the previous year, bringing deforestation to its lowest level in nine years. according to official data released last week.
During those 12 months, the Amazon lost 6,288 square kilometers (2,428 square miles), roughly the size of the U.S. state of Delaware. But that data fails to account for this year’s increase in destruction, which will only be included in next year’s figures.
Despite success in combating deforestation in the Amazon, Lula’s government has been criticized by environmentalists for supporting projects that could harm the region, such as paving a highway that cuts through an ancient area and could encourage logging and oil drilling near the mouth of the Amazon. River and construction of a railway to transport soybeans to Amazonian ports.
While Biden is the first sitting president in the Amazon, former President Theodore Roosevelt visited the region with the help of the American Museum of Natural History after his defeat by Woodrow Wilson in 1912. The former president was joined by his son and naturalists and they traveled approximately 15,000 miles during which the former president fell ill with malaria and suffered a serious leg infection after a boating accident.
Biden is making the Amazon visit as part of a six-day trip to South America, the first to the continent of his presidency. He came from Lima, Peru, where he attended the annual Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit and met with Chinese President Xi Jinping.
After his stopover in Manaus, he was heading to Rio de Janeiro for this year’s Group of 20 summit.