The Global Environment Facility (GEF) Council has approved a US$113 million project to help protect over 80% of the Amazon and boost efforts to combat climate change through a regional initiative.
The GEF will commit such amount of money for the Amazon Sustainable Landscapes Program, a regional program spanning Brazil, Colombia and Peru that is expected to leverage US$682 million in additional financing and span over five years.
The program aims to maintain 73,000,000 hectares of forest land, promote sustainable land management in 52,700 hectares, and support actions that will help reduce CO2 emissions by 300 million tons by 2030.
The initiative will be implemented by the World Bank as lead agency, the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) and the United Nations Development Program (UNDP).
For the first time, a program will take an integrated approach to protecting the Amazon ecosystem and the globally significant biodiversity.
The program will also mitigate climate change by implementing policies to foster sustainable land use, protected areas management and restore vegetation cover.
According to Gustavo Suarez, Coordinator for the National Program for Conservation of Forests in Peru's Ministry of Environment, Peru has a national Strategy for Forest and Climate Change that tackles greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and promotes the reduction of deforestation.
"The threats to the Amazon forests and rivers related to export markets, transport infrastructure development, illegal activities, social inequality and poverty are growing,” he noted.
Finally, Suarez argued it is only through strong cooperation among our three countries that we can expect to succeed in preserving biodiversity and forests in the Amazon.
(END) MVM/JCC/RMB/MVB
Published: 10/23/2015