Colombia proposes an international fund to help farmers protect the Amazon

Colombian President Gustavo Petro announced that he would ask rich countries and multinational companies to pay farmers to protect the Amazon rainforest and restore deforested areas.

“We need to create a fund of about $500 million annually, on a permanent basis and for twenty years, so that the largest companies in the world and the richest governments, if they really want to advance the fight against climate change, can,” Petro said during the visit. to an indigenous school in Leticia, the capital of the province of Amazonas, through our funding, either through carbon credits or through direct contributions.”

Colombia’s leftist president announced his intention to present the initiative at the upcoming UN climate conference (COP27) to be held in Egypt next November.

Petro explained that the new Colombian government intends to use the money to pay monthly wages to “one hundred thousand Amazonian families (…) who will work to re-grow forests where they were burned and will protect them when they are in danger. .”

He pointed out that this would “save 21 million hectares” of destruction in the region, which is the richest and most biodiverse in the world.

The Amazon Basin, which extends over an area of ​​7.4 million square kilometers, covers about forty percent of South America in nine countries and has an estimated population of 34 million, most of whom are indigenous peoples.

Source: AFP.

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