45,586 square kilometers – the number is difficult to grasp. 45,586 square kilometers correspond almost exactly to the area of the state of Lower Saxony. And it is the area by which the Amazon rainforest shrank in the four years from 2019 to 2022, according to calculations by the National Institute for Space Research (INPE) in Brazil. These years correspond to the tenure of right-wing President Jair Bolsonaro, who was succeeded by Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva on New Year’s Day. Species and climate protection were not an issue for Bolsonaro, under Lula it should be different. Many hopes rest on him in Berlin.
This also explains why Federal President Frank-Walter Steinmeier flew to Brasília for the inauguration and now wants to see for himself the next day. On Sunday evening he traveled to Manaus. His message: “It is important to all of us that we preserve the green lungs of the earth, the rainforests of the Amazon.”
The great German interest in this topic is also made clear by the fact that Environment Minister Steffi Lemke (Greens) is accompanying the President. Both want to visit the monitoring center for deforestation in Manaus and the research station Atto in the Amazon rainforest. This is run jointly by German and Brazilian scientists. They research the complicated interactions between rainforest and climate.
The Amazon rainforest is spread across nine South American countries, with Brazil accounting for the largest share. According to the nature conservation organization WWF, the largest rainforest in the world with an area of seven million square kilometers binds twelve percent of the freshwater on earth and is home to ten percent of all species in the world. The WWF calculates that around 20 percent of the original area has already been destroyed. Scientists reckoned that a tipping point would be reached at 25 percent. The Amazon would then turn into a steppe covering an area the size of France, Spain, Sweden, Germany and Finland put together.
“If the Amazon tipping point is reached, one of the most important climate regulators for our globe, for our planet, would fail,” warned Federal Environment Minister Lemke in Brazil. “This would result in severe disturbances in the climate system that we cannot predict precisely, but which would affect the entire planet.” According to experts, the global climate protection goals cannot be achieved if the green lungs of the world are further decimated by deforestation.
In his first two terms of office from 2003 to 2011, Lula did not really appear as a Green Party. But since his election at the end of October, he has made a number of points that have also been positively received in Berlin. At the world climate conference in Sharm el Sheikh in November, he announced that he wanted to focus his work on combating climate change and protecting the Amazon region. “There is no climate security in the world without a protected Amazon region,” he said at the time.
Wildfire season in Brazil runs from June to October. In most cases, the trees are felled first and the cleared areas are then set on fire to create new pastures and farmland for soybean cultivation, for example. However, Lula’s stated goal is to end deforestation by 2030. Environmental and control bodies weakened under Bolsonaro are to be rebuilt and environmental crimes punished. At the same time, he offered the United Nations to host the 2025 World Climate Conference and to hold it in the Amazon region. Lula also appointed prominent conservationist Marina Silva as environment minister.
The federal government wants to seize the opportunity offered by the change of government in Brazil. “We want a new alliance in cooperation with Brazil to save the rainforest, against species extinction,” said Environment Minister Lemke in Brasília.
Germany does not stop at verbal support for the new president. Steinmeier announced in Brasília that 35 million euros from the Amazon fund, which had been frozen under Bolsonaro, would now be released again. In addition, Berlin is doubling the funds for the global protection of forests from one to two billion euros. Money from this will also flow to South America.
