Presidents of Brazil, France announce green investment plan on Amazon visit

French President Emmanuel Macron and his Brazilian counterpart Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva launched a billion-euro Amazonian green investment plan on Tuesday, the first day of their visit.

Their visit to Belem, the site of the 2025 UN climate meetings, makes Macron the first French president to visit Brazil in 11 years, seeking a fresh start following spats with former President Jair Bolsonaro over environmental degradation and insults to his wife, Brigitte Macron.

The investment plan aims to raise “1 billion euros ($1.08 billion) of public and private investment over the next four years,” according to a roadmap published by the French presidency ahead of next year’s COP30 summit.

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The leaders are seeking to promote “a great public and private global investment plan into the bioeconomy” in the Brazilin and Guyanese Amazon, the announcement said, especially as Brazil presides over the G20 for 2024.

France, which has the seventh biggest economy globally, and Brazil, which has the ninth largest, are seen as significant participants in a geopolitical landscape characterised by competition between China and the United States.

Paris views Brasilia as an intermediary between itself and the big developing economies, whose voices Brazil is attempting to enhance through its G20 leadership and membership in the BRICS+ alliance.

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“We are living in a Franco-Brazilian moment,” the Elysee presidential palace said earlier, highlighting “many points of convergence” with Lula, particularly on “major global issues.”

“France is an essential, unavoidable actor for Brazilian foreign policy,” said the head of Brazilian diplomacy for Europe, Maria Luisa Escorel de Moraes.

Amazon chief to be honored

Tuesday’s announcement proposes the creation of a “carbon market,” intended to reward countries which invest in natural carbon sinks, such as the Amazon rainforest.

The world’s largest tropical forest plays a key role in the fight against climate change by absorbing carbon dioxide emissions.

Deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon halved in 2023 after soaring under Bolsonaro, as Lula’s government stepped up environmental policing.

The agreement also includes support for “indigenous people and local Amazon communities, which have an essential role in protecting biodiversity through their traditional knowledge and forest management practices,” according to the announcement.

In Belem, Macron awarded tribal chief Raoni Metuktire with the Legion of Honor, the highest French distinction, for his role as an “international figure in the fight for the preservation of the Amazon rainforest and the culture of indigenous peoples,” according to the French presidency.

Metuktire left his home in the Amazon more than 30 years ago to travel the world with his warning of the threats posed by the destruction of the rainforest.

A striking figure with his large wooden lip plate and yellow feather headdress, he has taken his message to popes, royals and presidents, with his stature as an environmental campaigner rising with growing awareness of the climate emergency.

Mercosur and Ukraine

France and Brazil are working together to manufacture four conventionally powered submarines, the third of which will be launched on Wednesday by both leaders at the Itaguai naval base, near Rio de Janeiro.

Brasilia could also call on Paris to help it develop nuclear propulsion on a fifth submarine.

Then there are the more sticky topics, such as the long-stalled free trade agreement between the European Union and South America’s Mercosur bloc, which has recently run into fierce resistance from European farmers.

Macron said in January that France opposes the deal because it “doesn’t make Mercosur farmers and companies abide by the same rules as ours.”

While Lula is expected to reiterate his call for the rapid signing of the deal, both Paris and Brasilia have indicated the two-decade old negotiations would not be a major focus of Macron’s trip.

The war in Ukraine, which Macron wants to be a key focus of the G20, is another point of contention.

Lula, who has positioned himself as a champion of the “global South,” has insisted that Kyiv and Moscow share responsibility over the conflict and has refused to take a stand against Russia.