Brazil's Amazon states have conducted meetings with Norway on Wednesday to potentially obtain some $500 million in funding for sustainable rainforest projects if a federal-level agreement to provide the funding does not materialize.
The half-billion-dollar funding was allotted to Brazil's Amazon Fund, which was established in 2008 to receive donations for projects that help to prevent deforestation.
This, Norway believes, will not serve their best interest and disagrees with the changes Brazil's Environment Minister Ricardo Salles has suggested for the funds, which remains "untouched" pending an agreement, Norway Environment Ministry spokesman, Jo Randen, told The Associated Press.
According to Amapa state Gov. Valdez Góes, who had talks with Norway's climate and environment minister Ola Elvestuen on Wednesday at the United Nations Climate Conference, the nine states of Brazil's Amazon hopes to receive the money directly if no federal agreement is reached.
Growing Skepticism
"If they (national governments) are unable to settle their conflict, they need to think about structures like ours," Góes, who heads the state consortium, said in a Madrid telephone interview.
The talks with Norway are part of Amazonian states' wider effort to develop direct contact with donor countries at a time when President Jair Bolsonaro's administration's commitment to counter deforestation is facing growing international skepticism.
The governors also held talks with officials from Germany, which this year suspended support for the environment, as well as with France, the UK, in addition to Norway and the United States, Góes said.
Foreign leaders also frowned on President Jair Bolsonaro and his far-right administration repeatedly attacking environment-protecting academics, experts and non-profits.
Bolsonaro, a former captain of the army, suggested without offering any evidence that non-profits were behind some of the fires that broke out in July and August in the Amazon as a means of making his administration look bad.
Deforestation At Its Worst
He later claimed that US movie star Leonardo DiCaprio was partly responsible for the blazes by funding certain non-profits. DiCaprio denied the funding, but showed solidarity with these parties.
In April, the president released a presidential decree dissolving hundreds of committees where non-profits, experts and leaders of civil society played an important role. One was the Amazon Fund Guidance Committee, which had established criteria for selecting projects and allocating funds.
Meanwhile, official data from the Brazilian Space Research Institute found that Amazon's deforestation has risen to its worst level in more than a decade, nearly 30 percent in the four quarters through July. Para state alone accounted for 40 percent of the loss, with an incident heat map running along the Trans-Amazon and BR-163.
