The President of the Senate, Rodrigo Pacheco (PSD-MG), received this Tuesday (28) the United States Special Envoy for Climate John Kerry and the American Ambassador to Brazil, Elizabeth Balgkey. Among the topics discussed at the meeting, Pacheco highlighted climate change and energy transition.
According to the senator, Kerry heard that today there is an effective awareness in the country by society and institutions that the fight against illegal deforestation of Brazilian forests should be a priority and that Brazil needs to focus on the energy transition to value fuels and renewable energy.
“It was a very positive meeting of establishment alignment, partnerships and I made the Federal Senate and the National Congress available for this collaboration with the Executive of Brazil and the United States in this purpose of aligning effective actions. So there is an awareness of what needs to be done now and we have the collaboration of several countries in the international community and the manifestation of support from the United States to Brazil in this regard, including the allocation of resources from the Amazon Fund, obviously all of this is very welcome”
In practice, on the part of the Executive, Pacheco added that there must be a focus against illegal deforestation in the Amazon and forests, in addition to effectiveness in police, inspection and control actions. Another point defended by the President of the Senate was the involvement of society, with the payment of environmental services to encourage communities to preserve the environment.
On the part that falls to the Legislature, Pacheco mentioned the improvement of laws. According to him, Brazil has good environmental laws, but which “unfortunately” are not complied with, such as the law on environmental crimes.
The president of the Senate also defended that the Economic Affairs Commission should delve deeper into the issue of the carbon credit market and that the House consider an environmental licensing project that defines which land title regularization model will be adopted in the country.
“These are important legislative milestones that we are going to discuss, but always with this bias that economic involvement necessarily needs to submit to a reality of environmental preservation. So we are going to do this work with a lot of priority in the Senate”, he advanced.
Other meetings
Early in the morning, the US special envoy also met with senators Nelsinho Trad (PSD-MS), Tereza Cristina (PP-MS), Espiridião Amin (PP-SC), Izalci Lucas (PSDB-DF) and Mecias de Jesus (Republicanos-RR) to discuss measures to combat deforestation in Brazil.
Trad is the current president of the Amazonian Parliament that was established by the 1989 Declaration of the Amazon. .
