UN climate conference: The rainforest has its price

Dhe Amazon rainforest has lost an area almost the size of Britain in the past 20 years. From 2004 onwards there was a positive development, but a negative trend has been evident again for several years. This has mainly to do with President Jair Bolsonaro. But he lost the runoff, albeit very narrowly.

In January, he will be succeeded by Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, who previously ruled Brazil from 2003 to 2010 and was able to drastically slow down the rate at which the rainforest was shrinking. That, says Lula da Silva, he wants to achieve again. 60 percent of the Amazon rainforest is in Brazil, another ten percent in Colombia. Gustavo Petro has ruled there since this year, who also states that he wants to protect nature.

If the two left-wing politicians are serious, a time window could now open to counteract climate change. So why not organize a meeting that focuses on protecting the rainforest? Couldn’t Germany, which aspires to a green future, also take the initiative, along with the United States and other like-minded people?

Of course, this would have to be pursued more seriously than in the last attempt. “Latin America has been out of our sight for too long,” said former Foreign Minister Heiko Maas in April 2019, before embarking on a trip to Colombia, Mexico and Brazil, where Bolsonaro had just become president. Maas then announced a Latin America initiative. But nothing really came of this project, and there was little interest on the other side. Even the media in the countries he was visiting at the time hardly took any notice of the German visitor. The following year, the corona pandemic was to break out across the world, but even without it, Latin America would probably have slipped out of German sight again.

In the end it’s about the money

This may be understandable given the large number of crises. It is an omission nonetheless. Because even if Latin America is not free from regional conflicts and democracy is losing acceptance, there are still strong cultural similarities between Europe and Latin America. Since the United States has also increasingly averted its gaze, China is taking advantage of the situation and anchoring itself more and more economically in the region. In South America, the People’s Republic is now the most important trading partner.

As good as it sounds that Petro in Colombia and Lula da Silva in Brazil are in favor of preserving the rainforest, one cannot hope that this will happen on its own. The topic played a minor role in the Brazilian election campaign. The new president of Brazil is likely to have other priorities than devoting himself to nature conservation despite all his climate policy assurances. First and foremost, most Brazilians and Colombians – just like us Germans – care about their own wallets. The Clinton election campaign slogan, which is now thirty years old, also applies here: “It’s the economy, stupid!”

It is worth a try

This in turn means that Brazil and Colombia should be given the prospect of protecting the rainforest not only for the global climate, but also for satisfying their own financial needs. Lula da Silva has already announced plans to hold a meeting next year to ally with Indonesia and Congo, also rainforest states, to speak with a strong voice in international negotiations.

In 2018, when he was in opposition at the time, the current Minister of Finance, Christian Lindner, proposed buying parts of the rainforest in order to protect it. A similar project had failed once, among other things, due to resistance from the FDP. Because in the noughties, some countries wanted to pay $350 million into a trust fund so that Ecuador would leave a biosphere reserve where oil was to be extracted untouched. “I’m not paying for another country not to do something,” said then Development Minister Dirk Niebel.

But protecting the rainforest comes at a price. The only question is which one? It is at least good news that Germany and Norway want to revive the Amazon Fund founded in 2008, which Bolsonaro wanted nothing more to do with. A financial offer that goes beyond this should be well thought out in any case, if you do not want other countries to make demands that cannot be met. And it would have to withstand changes in government. Maybe that’s difficult. But it would be worth a try.