By Oluchi Omai
At the G20 summit in Rio de Janeiro, President Biden revealed that the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) will invest nearly $40 million to enhance the protection of the Brazilian Legal Amazon. This significant commitment aims to launch new activities that will boost the bioeconomy and attract further funding from U.S. philanthropies and the private sector.
The new initiatives will cover over 42 million hectares of Protected Areas, equivalent to the size of California. This includes Conservation Units and 104 Indigenous lands across all nine states of the Brazilian Amazon. The efforts will focus on improving forest fire management, promoting regenerative agriculture in high-risk deforestation areas, enhancing territorial management for Indigenous communities, and strengthening bioeconomy value chains to ensure that economic development and forest conservation go hand-in-hand.
This initiative builds on more than 30 years of collaboration between the United States, the Government of Brazil, and various civil society and private sector partners to safeguard the Amazon rainforest and support the people of Brazil.