Since Day One of the Biden-Harris Administration, the fight against climate change has been a defining cause of President Biden’s leadership and presidency. These past four years, the Administration has created a bold new playbook that has turned tackling the climate crisis into an enormous economic opportunity – both at home and abroad. After spearheading the most significant domestic climate and conservation action in history and leading global efforts to tackle the climate crisis, President Biden travelled to Manaus, Brazil, where he met with Indigenous and other leaders and became the first sitting U.S. president to visit the Amazon rainforest.
The President has leveraged the nation’s leadership on domestic climate and conservation action to help accelerate global efforts to combat and reverse deforestation and deploy nature-based solutions that reduce emissions, enhance biodiversity, and build resilience to a changing climate. As part of advancing this ambitious climate and conservation agenda, the Administration is investing in Amazon conservation efforts, sustainable land management, and wildfire prevention, while also strengthening the country’s collaboration with Brazil, support for Indigenous communities, and efforts to combat illegal deforestation in the Amazon and around the world.
As part of his historic trip to the Amazon, President Biden announced that the United States has fulfilled his historic pledge to increase U.S. international climate finance to over $11 billion a year by 2024 – making the United States the largest bilateral provider of climate finance in the world. This represents a more than six-fold increase from the $1.5 billion in climate finance the U.S. provided in FY21, underscoring the success of President Biden’s whole-of-government effort to scaling-up U.S. climate finance over the last four years. This also includes achieving for the second year in a row his pledge to scale-up U.S. adaptation finance six-fold to over $3 billion per year to help vulnerable countries around the world build resilience to the impacts of climate change, as part of implementing the President’s Emergency Plan for Adaptation and Resilience (PREPARE). This also included achieving record-levels of climate investments through the U.S. International Development Finance Corporation (DFC) and U.S. Export Import Bank (EXIM) – with DFC reaching $3.71 billion in FY24 and EXIM increasing its investments to a record $1.6 billion in FY24.
November 17th, International Conservation Day
President Biden also signed a U.S. proclamation designating November 17th as International Conservation Day. The proclamation recognizes that conservation is critical to protecting the livelihoods of the people who depend on our world’s natural wonders, conserving our ecosystems and wildlife, ensuring our lands and waters can be enjoyed for generations to come, and helping avoid the worst impacts of climate change.
Central to the trip is President Biden’s commitment to conserving forests and combatting global deforestation. Over the past four years, the Administration has led efforts to conserve more than 45 million acres of lands and waters; safeguard mature and old-growth forests on Federal lands at home; strengthen reforestation partnerships across the country to support local economies; combat global deforestation; and deploy nature-based solutions that reduce emissions, enhance biodiversity, and build resilience in the face of increasing climate threats. The Biden-Harris Administration announced new efforts to accelerate global action to conserve lands and waters, protect biodiversity, and tackle the climate crisis, including:
• Announcing $50 Million for the Amazon Fund. The United States is announcing $50 million for the Amazon Fund, which will bring U.S. total contributions to the Amazon Fund to $100 million, subject to Congressional notification.
• Launching the Brazil Restoration & Bioeconomy Finance Coalition. The United States, BTG Pactual, and over 12 partners are announcing the launch of the Brazil Restoration and Bioeconomy Finance Coalition. This Coalition intends to mobilize at least $10 billion in public and private investment for land restoration and bioeconomy-related projects by 2030, supporting the conservation and restoration of at least 5.5 million hectares during this period, and contributing to 1.5 gigatons of emissions reductions and removals through 2050. At least $500 million is expected to be invested in projects that support Indigenous peoples and local communities in the Brazilian Amazon.
• Announcing a New DFC Investment in the Largest Reforestation Projects in the Amazon. DFC is providing a $37.5 million loan to Mombak Gestora de Recursos Ltda., to support the large-scale planting of native tree species on degraded grasslands in Brazil, which will sequester carbon and enable biodiversity conservation. Mombak has designed an innovative and large-scale approach to generating high-quality “Verified Emission Reduction (VER)” credits by acquiring large tracts of degraded grassland in the Brazilian state of Pará and surrounding regions, which it will plant with native tree species. This activity is expected to sequester approximately 5 million metric tons of CO2 over 50 years while preserving biodiversity in the Amazon region.
• Announcing Support for the Tropical Forest Forever Facility. The United States today announced its support for President Lula’s bold vision of creating the TFFF – a pathbreaking new $125 billion fund that reflects both the urgency and the scale of the challenge of conserving the world’s most important forests. TFFF will attract substantial private capital and make a meaningful contribution to tropical forest conservation. The United States is announcing support to help finalize the necessary technical and analytical work needed to design and setup the Facility.
Source: U.S. Embassy