Joe Biden held this Thursday his first meeting as president with his Brazilian counterpart Jair Bolsonaroon the occasion of the Summit of the Americas, on a day of announcements on one of the issues on which they disagree: global warming.
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This is the first meeting between the two leaders, who have shown an evident distance: Bolsonaro is a great admirer of Trump and Biden has repeatedly criticized his counterpart’s policy about the Amazon
Biden told Bolsonaro that the rest of the world “should be able to help” Brazil “preserve as much as it can” of the Amazon.
Biden spoke in this way at the beginning of a bilateral meeting with Bolsonaro, the first between the two, within the framework of the IX Summit of the Americas, in Los Angeles.
The US president acknowledged, however, that Brazil has made “real sacrifices” when it comes to protecting the largest tropical forest on the planet, in a context of criticism from the international community for the record rates of deforestation in the Amazon.
“I think the rest of the world should be able to help them protect as much as they can (the Amazon),” Biden said. Bolsonaro affirmed, for his part, that Brazil “preserves its territory very well” and that “sometimes” he feels that Brazil’s sovereignty over its part of the Amazon is “threatened”, alluding to criticism from other countries and organizations. .
Since he was a presidential candidate, Bolsonaro has defended the exploitation of the natural resources of the Amazon, including in indigenous reserves, and since he came to power in January 2019, he has relaxed the control of activities that attack the environment, such as mining and trade. of wood, mostly practiced illegally in that region.
The relationship between Biden and Bolsonaro has been distant even before they coincided in power, and the White House announced before the meeting that the US president planned to put the issue of the Amazon on the table and the need for the Brazilian elections to October be “free”.
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During the meeting, Biden nonetheless tried to bring positions closer together, describing Brazil as “a wonderful place with wonderful people” and recalling that he has visited the country three times, including for a soccer World Cup. He added that part of what makes that country wonderful is its “vibrant and inclusive democracy and its strong electoral institutions,” at a time of tension over Bolsonaro’s position on the October elections.
The constant references of the far-right leader to the electoral process and to the “armed people” have aroused fears in the opposition, and even in some institutions, that in the event of a defeat in October the ruler will encourage a violent reaction from his followers.
The political base of the extreme right, moreover, is largely made up of the military and the police, all of which has led many analysts to predict that the 2022 electoral campaign could be punctuated by episodes of violence.
climate crisis
The truth is that the climate is a central issue on Biden’s agenda.
This Thursday its vice president, Kamala Harris, will launch the Partnership between the United States and the Caribbean to address the Climate Crisis (PACC 2030), in a region vulnerable to rising sea levels due to global warming, reported a US government official.
The United States will also “provide support” to Brazil, Colombia and Peru through an initiative called “Amazonia Connect”which was launched at the climate summit in Glasgow,
in the United Kingdom.
Latin America and the Caribbean, a region with immense natural resources, has suffered the effects of global warming, which also harms its economic activities.
The United States expects the inclusion of five more members (Barbados, Jamaica and Guyana, Brazil and Argentina) to the initiative called Renewable Energies for Latin America and the Caribbean (RELAC, in English), which already includes another 15 nations.
The ninth Summit of the Americas is affected by the absence of several presidents, including the Mexican Andrés Manuel López Obrador, unhappy with Washington’s decision to have excluded the governments of Cuba, Nicaragua and Venezuela, which it considers dictatorships.
The president sent his foreign minister, Marcelo Ebrard, who, upon his arrival, described the exclusion as a “strategic error” and advocated “refounding the inter-American order.”
“It is evident that the OAS and its way of acting are exhausted,” he released, about the Organization of American States (OAS).
The United States must move carefully so as not to lose influence in a region where China is gaining ground and has become the number one or number two trading partner for many countries.
The Summit of the Americas should serve precisely to promote its relationship with the Latin American countries against Beijing.
According to the Council of Foreign Relations, Chinese President Xi Jinping has visited the region 11 times since taking office in 2013, and Joe Biden has not visited the region since January 2021.
INTERNATIONAL WRITING
*With information from AFP.
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