The minister of Environment, Ricardo Salles, was received on Thursday, 7, at the headquarters of the Brazilian Development Bank (BNDES), in Rio de Janeiro, by president Joaquim Levy and Karla Bertocco, managing director of Governance and Infrastructure of the Bank..

 

The visit of the minister, who came to the Bank to learn about the Amazon Fund operation and the projects supported with these funds, was an opportunity to celebrate a “green agenda” day at BNDES, with the signature of a major contract of the Amazon Fund and discussions with representatives and several environmental leaders, including former federal deputy and environmentalist Fábio Feldman, Marcelo Barbosa Vieira, president of the Brazilian Rural society, and Caio Koch-Weser, former Secretary of State in the Federal Ministry of Finance in Germany, associated with the World Resource Institute (WRI).

 

The minister of Environment is the president of the Amazon Fund Steering Committee (COFA), which completed 10 years in 2018. The fund, a result of donations from the governments of Norway and Germany and from Petrobras was established by Decree no. 6,527 of 8/1/2008 and has already disbursed over R$ 1 billion in more than 100 projects executed by direct federal and state administration bodies, universities, and civil society institutions. The body is managed by representatives of federal and state governments (Amazon Region) and civil society. The complete portfolio of the Amazon Fund can be found on the website www.fundoamazonia.gov.br  

 

The Amazon Fund contract signed during the morning, in the amount of R$ 9.3 million, aims to support the environmental regularization process in the nine states that make up the Brazilian Amazon. It will be executed by the Brazilian Foundation for Sustainable Development (FBDS), whose president of the Board of Trustees is the former mayor of Rio de Janeiro, Israel Klabin.

 

During the ceremony, the president Joaquim Levy noted the progress Brazil has made in the area of sustainable energy and the participation of BNDES in the success of this agenda, underlining the growth of wind generation, which already accounts for more than 6% of the Brazilian energy matrix, as well as solar energy, with Brazil among the 10 countries with the fastest growth of photovoltaic energy. (Check out the speech of president Joaquim Levy)

 

He also emphasized another form of solar energy of great success in Brazil, which is extracted from sugar cane, through ethanol, as well as from the vineyard biogas, and the cellulosic ethanol begins to be produced. BNDES’s support to this sector must remain significant, without embargo on new forms of partnerships with private financing. The president also stressed the importance of monitoring the Amazon to guarantee all aspects of our sovereignty over that region and its utilization for the benefit of Brazilians today and for the next generations, from all social strata and origins. 

 

Minister Ricardo Salles stressed the importance of the Amazon Fund to be managed with maximum transparency and ensure the funds arrive to the final recipients, enhancing the efficiency and effectiveness of the activities in this area. The minister stated that the partnership of FBDS with the Ministry of Environment and BNDES, manager of the Amazon Fund, is a sign of the times, emphasizing the focus on getting accurate information to guide public policies and their effective implementation. “Count on us in the Ministry and we count on the help from all sectors in environmental protection. The doors in the government are open. President Bolsonaro is also worried about this issue; he expresses great concern in bringing tangibility to solutions for the environment, so they can achieve results,” he said.

 

 

The funds provided by the Amazon Fund through operation with FBDS are non-reimbursable and will be applied in the mapping, with high precision, of hydrographic networks of the use and soil cover of the whole Amazon biome, allowing the visualization in scale properties. The project, whose duration is 36 months, contributes to fulfilling the commitments of Brazil in the Paris Agreement and favors the progress in the execution of the Forest Code, which established the Rural Environmental Registry (CAR), electronic public record, mandatory for all rural properties. It will also allow the mapping of the hydrographic network and the delimitation of permanent preservation areas (APP) of bodies of water, in addition to the calculation of the environmental liability existing in water APPs.

 

The database generated by the project will be integrated into the National Rural Environmental Register System (Sicar), allowing the visualization APPs with bodies of water, as well as use and soil cover. Thus, the project will contribute to the identification of environmental liabilities and improve the analysis and validation process of CAR by the states.  

 

The initiative also provides for the elaboration of maps, in order to space the liabilities of water APPs per municipality and protected area. The maps will be available to managers at federal, state and municipal levels, contributing to the development and implementation of public policies for the compliance with the Forest Code. 

 

Agreement with the Brazilian Forest Service – To carry out the project, FBDS signed a Technical Cooperation Agreement with the Brazilian Forest Service (SFB), public body responsible for the implementation of CAR at national level. The registration is made by the owners by inserting this information in Sicar. According to the Release of SFB, up to December 31, 2018, 1,143,549 rural properties were registered in the nine states of the Brazilian Amazon.

 

Amazon Fund – Considering this FBDS project, the portfolio of the Amazon Fund has 18 contracts that support CAR throughout the Brazilian territory, in the total amount of R$ 321 million. Managed by BNDES, in coordination with the Ministry of Environment, the Fund is considered to be the main results-based payment mechanism for REDD+ (reduction of greenhouse gas emissions from deforestation and forest degradation).

FBDS – Private non-profit institution founded in 1992 by 24 companies, the Brazilian Foundation for Sustainable Development (FBDS) acts on the dissemination of best practice in environment and sustainability along with stakeholders. It contributes to the formulation of public policies and generates scientific knowledge in the areas of environmental assets, sustainable agriculture and urban sustainability. It developed a similar project for mapping of liabilities of water APPs in the Atlantic Forest and Cerrado, verifying, through SFB, possible inconsistencies in the records of these biomes.

 

Photos.

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