Brazil's government plans to set up a donation-based fund to help finance conservation of the Amazon after illegal logging increased last year.
The government is seeking to raise $200 million from Norway and corporate sources in the first year, said Tasso Azevedo, director of the country's forestry services. The fund, to be established in May, will seek to raise as much as $1 billion annually to help slow deforestation of the Amazon, he said.
``Everybody says they want to help maintain the Amazon, but nobody has reached into their pockets until now,'' Azevedo told reporters today in Brasilia. The fund creates an opportunity to help preserve an area that represents about half the world's remaining rainforest.
Deforestation in the Amazon accelerated in the last five months of 2007, after slowing for the past four years, the Environmental Ministry said in a release distributed Jan. 23 in Brasilia. Preliminary figures show destruction between August and December may have reached as many as 7,000 square kilometers, or the equivalent of 60 percent of the deforestation in the 12 months through July 2007.
President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva urged G-8 countries to contribute to the fund. Brazil needs about $2 billion annually to stop illegal logging in the Amazon, Azevedo said. Congress has allocated 500 million reais ($292 million) over four years from the budget to preserve the rainforest, he said.
``The countries that pollute the most need to pay their counterparts so poor nations can do what they haven't had the courage to do,'' Lula said today in Brasilia.
Donations for the fund won't generate carbon credits for the investors, he said. About 20 percent of global carbon emissions come from deforestation and forest degradation, according to the World Bank.
Brazil's state-development bank will be responsible for raising money for the fund.
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601086&sid=a8mplk223ua4&refer=latin_america
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