Amazon Fund: Bolsonaro government put at risk funding that has R$ 3.2 billion ‘frozen’, says CGU
June 30, 2022
17:06
Marcela Leiros – Amazon Agency
BRASILIA – A report from the Office of the Comptroller General (CGU), released this week, indicated that the federal government put the Amazon Fund at risk by extinguishing committees that managed the funding initiative. Until December, the Amazon Fund held R$ 3.2 billion . The impacts of the paralysis of the fund is one of the points of the request for the installation of the Parliamentary Inquiry Commission (CPI), known as the “CPI of NGOs”, authored by Senator Plínio Valério (PSDB-AM).
The Amazon Fund was created in 2008 to receive voluntary donations for actions to prevent, monitor, and combat deforestation, as well as for the conservation and sustainable use of the Legal Amazon. Norway and Germany are the main donors: R$3.4 billion have been donated to the Amazon Fund. In 2019, both blocked the transfer.
The CGU’s evaluation indicates that after extinguishing the Guidance Committee of the Amazon Fund (Cofa) and the and Technical Committee of the Amazon Fund (CTFA), the Ministry of Environment (MMA) did not propose to recreate them, disregarding “good practices of public governance generating negative impacts for environmental policies”.
“The Ministry of the Environment chose to maintain the extinction of the Committees (COFA and CTFA) essential to the governance of the Amazon Fund, even though art. 7 of Decree No. 9,759/2019 made it possible, within 47 days of the edition of the norm, to send a proposal for their recreation, without breaking the continuity of their work”.
Extinction of technical bodies
COFA was made up of representatives from the federal government, state governments, and civil society; and CTFA, made up of independent experts who attested to the reductions in greenhouse gas emissions from deforestation, whose calculations were performed by the MMA. The two were extinguished by Decree No. 9,759/2019, which abolished all collegiate bodies of the federal public administration that had been created before January 1, 2019.
The environmentalist and director of the non-profit organization WCS Brazil, Carlos Durigan, recalled that the paralysis of the fund has already brought countless losses to the Amazon’s socio-environmental agenda.
“The Amazon Fund was created to support a wide range of actions in this regard and had been supporting public management in the region with regard to agendas that include sustainable production chains, strengthening governance and management of protected areas, indigenous lands and quilombola territories, among many other relevant agendas. Its weakening ended up contributing to the scenario we are currently experiencing, of increased deforestation, degradation, and violence in the region”, he said.
Risks to the Amazon Fund
The Amazon Fund is managed by the National Bank for Economic and Social Development (BNDES). Detailing the risks, CGU indicated that the consequences to the billion-dollar fund include the suspension of new projects; the possibility of donors requesting the return of uncommitted resources in projects, which total R$3.2 billion; the inability to raise new donations to the Amazon Fund; and impacts on the implementation of the National REDD+ Strategy, the National Policy on Climate Change, and policies to combat deforestation.
The report also indicated that it was observed that the process of changes in the governance structure of the Amazon Fund was carried out entirely away from public debate, “without ensuring mechanisms for the participation of social actors involved in this decision-making process, violating the principles of social participation, transparency and accountability.
“The study verified that the Ministry did not have sufficient and coherent motivation for its decision. Within the period allowed by the Decree, there were no meetings with the Fund’s donors or presentation of proposals that would demonstrate the ministerial commitment to reestablish the governance structure of the Amazon Fund”, said the CGU.
MMA manifests itself
In manifestation to CGU, the ministry said it could not have presented a proposal for the recreation or modification of these committees without the consent of the donors, due to the provisions of the Memorandum of Understanding and the Donation Agreement signed between the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Norway and the BNDES.
The MMA also stated that “the documents raised by the audit team cannot serve as ballast to say that the MMA did not make an effort to seek consensus with donors, because the short deadline of Decree No. 9759/2019 was incompatible with the complexity surrounding the discussion about the change in governance of the Amazon Fund”.
See the report in full:
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