Western donors to the Amazon Fund have warned against the Brazilian government’s plans to use it to pave a major road in the rainforest.
A spokesperson for the German government, the fund’s second-biggest donor, told Climate Home that support for such a project “is not possible” according to the rules of the fund, which was specifically set up to reduce forest destruction in the Amazon.
The United States is “confident” the fund will use its resources “consistent with its governing regulations”, a US State Department spokesperson told Climate Home.
Environmentalists fear the project would trigger an explosion in forest destruction by giving illegal loggers easier access to remote areas of the rainforest.
Investment in large-scale infrastructure projects is not listed among the target actions of the 2008 presidential decree that established how the fund should spend its money.
But officials in the Lula administration want to tap the green funds for the paving of the 900-kilometre long BR-319 highway, cutting through the rainforest and connecting Manaus and Porto Velho.
The lower house of the Brazilian Congress voted last December in favour of a bill that would allow for the use of conservation funds to finance public works aimed at “recovering, paving and increasing the capacity” of the road. The bill needs Senate approval before becoming law.
‘Tremendous consequences’
Research shows every major highway project in the Amazon has set off a surge in land grabbing and illegal deforestation.
Philip Fearnside, a scientist at the National Institute for Amazonian Research in Manaus, told Climate Home “the consequences would be tremendous”.
He added that trees would not only be cleared on the roadside, but the project would create an interconnected network of major roads giving deforesters access to a much larger area.
Built in the 1970s by a military government, the BR-319 was abandoned a decade later due to a lack of maintenance.
Since disintegrated into a dirt road, much of the route is now impassable during the rainy season. Vehicles that attempt it during dry months crawl along the broken pavement.
A section of BR-319 in the Amazonas state of Brazil. Photo: Agencia CNT de Noticias
The Brazilian government has been sketching out plans to restore the highway on economic and social development grounds.
The transport minister, Renan Filho, announced last August that he was planning to pitch the Amazon Fund’s governing board a project to pave the road.
This would turn the road into the world’s “most sustainable highway” and would allow easier access for police patrols to monitor and prevent deforestation, the ministry argued.
But environmentalists argued that this is not the kind of project that the fund is meant to support. One of the fund’s creators, forest scientist Tasso Azevedo said the project “does not fit into any of the fund’s planned support lines”.
Amazon Fund revived
Created in 2008, the Amazon Fund has over $1.2 billion available for projects that prevent, monitor and combat deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon. The fund’s largest donors are Norway, Germany, the US, Switzerland and state-owned oil company Petrobras.
They have promised to inject an extra $800 million into the fund since President Lula revived the mechanism on his first day in office in 2023 after three years of inactivity.
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Western donors had stopped money transfers in 2019, under the previous government of Jair Bolsonaro, after the former president unilaterally suspended the board of directors and the technical committee of the fund.
The Brazilian Development Bank (BNDES) manages the fund and decides how to allocate its resources.
Last September it told Climate Home that any requests are processed “in accordance with the strategic vision, guidelines and focuses” outlined in the 2023-25 Biennium, a new set of guidelines created by the Amazon Fund’s Guiding Committee. It has not replied to further requests for comment.
Donors sceptical over plans
A spokesperson for Germany’s Ministry for cooperation and development, said the use of Amazon Fund resources “is clearly defined and restricted” by the presidential decree underpinning the fund’s creation. “Based on these rules and regulations, the use of financial resources for paving a road through the rainforest is not possible”, they added.
A US State Department spokesperson said they “are confident” the BNDES will use the fund’s resources “consistent with its governing regulations and Brazil’s public commitment to cease all deforestation in the Legal Amazon by 2030”.
A spokesperson for the Norwegian embassy in Brazil said it is for the Brazilian government through BNDES to decide on the specific use of the resources in the Amazon Fund. “The Norwegian Government has no say in the selection of projects”, it added.
The Brazilian government controls BNDES and appoints its head. “It is not an independent institution and the government has put pressure on its decisions in the past”, says Fearnside. “It just depends on how high a priority the project is for the government. The indication is that, except for the Ministry of Environment, the rest of the government is in favour of this highway”.
Fast-tracking process
Meanwhile, a group of parliamentarians from the Amazon regions brought a new bill to Congress aiming to fast-track the construction project. The text, approved under a special ‘urgency’ procedure, calls the highway “critical infrastructure, indispensable to national security”.
The bill would authorize the use of donations received by Brazil to help conservation of the Amazon for the repair works on BR-319.
“We want a road that gives us the right to go back and forth, to transport goods, to buy food. This is the only highway in Brazil that is not paved, we cannot treat people from the North as second-class citizens”, said Alberto Neto, the author of the bill, after its approval in the lower chamber.
The post Germany and US warn Brazil against using Amazon Fund to pave rainforest road appeared first on Climate Home News.
Germany and US warn Brazil against using Amazon Fund to pave rainforest road
An interview with author Catherine Coleman Flowers.
The fourth installment in our special Earth Day series
When the sciences and the humanities; democracy and ecology, are all under common and increasing attack, the efforts of independent experts and researchers matter more than ever.
David Ritter
So often in life, our most authentic moments of joy are the result of years of shared effort, and the culmination of a kind of deep faith in what is possible.
A few weeks ago, I had the honour of being in Canberra, along with some fellow environmentalists and scientists, to witness the enactment of the High Seas Biodiversity Bill 2026 by our federal parliament.
This was the moment that the Global Ocean Treaty—one of the most significant environmental agreements of our time—was given force through a domestic Australian law.
If you are part of the great Greenpeace family, you will know exactly why this was such a huge deal. The high seas make up around 60 per cent of the Earth’s surface and for too long, they have been subjected to open plunder. Now, for the first time in human history, there is an international instrument that enables the creation of massive high seas sanctuaries within which the ocean can be protected. This is a monumental collective achievement by Greenpeace and all the other groups who have campaigned for high seas marine sanctuaries for many years.
But as momentous as the ratification was, the parliamentary proceedings were distinctly lacking in drama or fanfare–so much so, that Labor MP backbencher Renee Coffey felt the need to gesture to those of us in the gallery with a grin, to indicate that the process was over and done.
The modesty of the moment had me thinking about the decades of quiet dedication by many hands that are invariably required to achieve great social change. In particular, I found myself thinking about researchers. So much of the expert academic work that underpins achievements like the Global Ocean Treaty is slow, painstaking, solitary—and often out of sight.
I think of the persistence and tenacity of researchers as an expression of love, founded in an authentic sense of wonder and curiosity about the world—and frequently linked to a deep ethical desire to protect that source of wonderment.
In 2007, one of the very first things I was given to read after starting with Greenpeace as an oceans campaigner in London was a report entitled Roadmap to Recovery: A global network of marine reserves. Specific physical sensations can tend to stick in the mind from periods of personally significant transitions, and the tactile reminiscence of holding the thin cardboard of the modest grey cover of that report is deeply embedded in my memory. I suspect I still even have that original copy in a box somewhere.
Written by a team of scientists led by Professor Callum Roberts, a marine conservation biologist from the University of York, the Roadmap provided the first scientifically informed vision of a large-scale global network of high seas marine sanctuaries, protecting the world’s oceans at scale. Of course, twenty years ago, this idea felt more like utopian science fiction, because there was no Global Oceans Treaty. But what seemed fanciful at the start of this century is now possible-–and I have every confidence the creation of large scale high seas marine sanctuaries will now happen through the application of ongoing campaigning effort—but we would never have gotten this far without the dedication of researchers, driven by their love of the oceans. And now here we are, with the ability for humanity to legally protect the high seas for the first time.
Campaigning and research so often work hand in hand like this: the one identifying the need and the solutions; the other driving the change. Because in a world of powerful vested interests, good science alone doesn’t shift decision makers—that takes activism and campaigning—but equally, there must be a basis of evidence and reason on which to build our public advocacy.
So, I want to take a moment to think with love and appreciation for everyone who has contributed to making this possible. I’ve never met the team of scientists who authored the original Roadmap, so belatedly but sincerely, then, to Leanne Mason, Julie P. Hawkins, Elizabeth Masden, Gwilym Rowlands, Jenny Storey and Anna Swift—and to every other researcher and scientist who has been involved in demonstrating why the Global Oceans Treaty has been so badly needed over the years—thank you for your commitment and devotion.
And to everyone out there who continues to believe that evidence and truth matter, and that our magnificent, fragile world deserves our respectful curiosity and study as an expression of our awe and enchantment, thank you for your conscientiousness.
When the sciences and the humanities; democracy and ecology, are all under common and increasing attack, the efforts of independent experts and researchers matter more than ever. You have Greenpeace’s deepest gratitude. Every day, we build on the foundations of your work and dedication. Thank you.
Q & A
I have been asked several times in recent weeks what the ongoing war means for the renewable energy transition in Australia.
While some corners of the fossil fuel lobby and the politicians captured by these vested interests have been very quick to use this crisis to call for more oil exploration and gas pipelines, the reality is that the current energy crisis has revealed the commonsense case for renewable energy.
As many, including climate and energy minister Chris Bowen have noted, renewable energy is affordable, inexhaustible, and sovereign—its supply cannot be blocked by warmongers or conflict. People intuitively know this; it’s why sales of electric cars have climbed to an all-time high, it’s why interest in rooftop solar and batteries has skyrocketed in recent months.
The reality is that oil and gas are to blame for much of the cost-of-living pain we’re feeling right now; fossil fuels are the disease, not the cure. If Australia were further along in our renewable energy transition and EV uptake, we would be much better insulated from petrol and gas price shocks and supply chain disruptions.
Yes, we need short-term solutions to ease the very real cost-of-living pressures that Australian communities and workers are facing as a result of fuel shortages. While replacement supplies is no doubt a valid step for now—Greenpeace is also backing taxes on the war profits of gas corporations to fund relief measures for Australians—in the long term, we will only get off the rollercoaster of fossil fuel dependency and price volatility if we break free from fossil fuels and accelerate progress towards an energy system built on 100% renewable energy, backed by storage.
Climate Change
A Protracted US–Iran War Could Strain Climate Finance From Wealthy Countries to Developing Nations
As rising oil prices make the case for renewables, experts say the World Bank and IMF must accelerate the shift to solar and wind or risk.
WASHINGTON, D.C.—The ongoing war in Iran is casting a long shadow over the climate finance commitments countries agreed to in 2024, experts warned, as surging oil prices and rising defense budgets put further pressure on the limited pot of money developing nations are counting on to stave off worsening impacts from a warming planet.
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