Last Sunday, a day before participating in the G20, Joe Biden became the first president of the United States to visit the Amazon. After meeting with representatives of indigenous peoples and flying over the Amazon aboard the presidential helicopter, Biden delivered a historic environmental speech in the city of Manaus, capital of Amazonas state: “I am proud to be here. The first sitting US president to visit the rainforest, pledged to save the rainforests.
Joe Biden launched an unprecedented package of donations aimed at curbing climate change from different public bodies and government agencies. Donations from the US International Development Finance Corporation (DFC, $3.71 billion) and the US Export-Import Bank (Exin, $1.6 billion) will be particularly large.
USAID, the American international cooperation agency, will finance, among other things, numerous environmental conservation and fire prevention projects. Furthermore, Biden announced direct funding for reforestation (180 million), indigenous communities, scientific research and the bioeconomy. The US contribution to the Brazilian Amazon Fund also increased by fifty million dollars (for a total of one hundred), historically financed by Norway and Germany.
Ahead of Biden’s visit, the White House released a statement saying the U.S. government had fulfilled its promise to provide $11 billion to fund climate change initiatives. Biden completed his strategy with a symbolic gesture: the declaration of November 17 as International Conservation Day.
Even if the donation from the Amazon Fund can be revoked by the US Congress, the legal diversification of donations and investments guarantees its execution, even if Donald Trump would like to revoke them during his mandate.
Climate misinformation
José Biden’s strategic visit to the Amazon is a breath of fresh air for Lula, president of Brazil and host of the G20 summit. Lula intends to consolidate concrete measures against climate change at the Rio de Janeiro summit. Faced with the prospect of a future Trump government critical in the fight against disinformation, suspicious of multilateralism and skeptical of climate change, the Biden and Lula tandem are deploying a planned and all-encompassing strategy to involve the rest of the world. One of Lula’s big bets is the launch of a fund to fight climate disinformation, in collaboration with the UN and UNESCO. Expected by the Folha de São Paulothe fund will dedicate resources to investigating disinformation and campaigns denouncing fake news and diplomatic actions. The proposal already has support from the United Kingdom, France, Chile, Morocco, Portugal and Sweden.
The Brazilian initiative, which will serve to pave the way for the COP30 in Belém in 2025, hits Donald Trump head on. “We must destroy the toxic industry of censorship, which emerged under the guise of a fight against information,” Trump said in a video posted on the social network X a few days ago. Trump has already announced that he will cut funding for projects aimed at combating disinformation and even block resources from universities that conduct research on the subject.
Milei’s initial rejection of the Global Alliance Against Hunger and Poverty
The summit of G20 presidents, held at the Museum of Modern Art (MAM) in Rio de Janeiro, began Monday morning with the highly anticipated first meeting between Lula and Javier Milei, president of Argentina. The cold welcome that Lula gave to Milei, barely a handshake, contrasted with the closeness with which he welcomed Joe Biden or Gustavo Petro, president of Colombia. Before the inaugural G20 session, former Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff was seen whispering in Lula’s ear. The privileged presence of Rousseff, current president of the BRICS banks, was also a message for Argentina, which recently refused to enter this political bloc.
Lula inaugurated the summit of presidents by presenting the Global Alliance against Hunger and Poverty. In a brief speech, the Brazilian president said that hunger, “in a world that produces almost six billion tons of food per year,” is unacceptable. “Hunger and poverty are not the result of scarcity or natural phenomena. Hunger is the biological expression of social ills. It is the product of political decisions that perpetuate the exclusion of a large part of humanity,” said the Brazilian president.
Lula indicated that the Alliance against Hunger and Poverty already has 81 member countries, the European Union and the African Union, 26 international organizations, nine financial institutions and 31 philanthropic foundations and non-governmental organizations. Spain, a permanent guest of the group, is one of the founding members. After the initial refusal to join Lula’s initiative, Argentina joined, bringing the number of founding countries to 82.
The Brazilian government says the announced commitments will create income transfers for five hundred million people, school feeding programs for 150 million children and health projects for 200 million women and children. Although the Alliance’s commitments imply that signatory countries develop policies at the national level, mechanisms for implementing public policies will also be created in developing countries.
When Lula announced the creation of a Global Alliance against Hunger and Poverty at the end of 2023, this announcement was received with some suspicion. Some countries have resisted the idea, saying other mechanisms to combat hunger already exist. Only at the UN, there are two mechanisms moving in this direction: the FAO (Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations) and the WFP (World Food Program). On the other hand, in 2012, the G8 created the New Initiative for Food Security and Nutrition, although it failed miserably. In 2017, hunger affected 541 million people worldwide, according to the FAO. This figure increased to 733 million in 2024. “The Alliance prioritizes the fight against hunger and poverty on the international agenda. It is the possibility of cooperating in a world that no longer cooperates. A sigh for this drowning multilateralism,” defends Laura Waisbich, director of Articulação Sul, former director of the Center for Brazilian Studies at Oxford.
Brazil hopes that in the medium term, the final number of signatory countries of the Global Alliance against Hunger and Poverty will approach one hundred.
Argentina’s accession gives a respite to the Brazilian delegation, which had already exposed in the press Javier Milei’s veto on many points of the G20 final declaration.
