Biden in historic Amazon trip as Trump return sparks climate fears

LIMA: US president Joe Biden will make an historic trip to the Amazon rainforest on Sunday to promote his record on fighting climate change ahead of a G20 summit overshadowed by Donald Trump’s vow to roll back his green policies.

Biden is heading to Manaus in Brazil, a city in the heart of the world’s largest jungle, on the last major foreign tour of his presidency before he hands the keys of the White House to Trump in January.

He will then continue on to Rio de Janeiro for a G20 summit starting Monday over which Trump’s impending return to power looms large.

Ahead of Biden’s visit to Manaus, the first by a sitting US president, the White House announced that the US had hit its target of increasing bilateral climate financing to US$11 billion a year.

It said that the figure reached this year was six times what the US was providing at the start of Biden’s term in 2021 and made “the US the largest bilateral provider of climate finance in the world”.

“The fight against climate change has been a defining cause of president Biden’s leadership and presidency,” the White House said.

Biden has cut a diminished figure on his last swing through South America as leader.

In Lima, where he attended a summit of Asia-Pacific allies before the G20, all eyes instead were on Chinese president Xi Jinping who was received with greater fanfare.

At a meeting with Biden the Chinese leader said he hoped for a “smooth transition” in relations with the future Trump administration.

The Republican president-elect has pledged to reverse Biden’s policies and could again pull the US, the world’s second-biggest polluter, out of a landmark 2015 deal on combating carbon emissions, as he did during his first term.

On Saturday, he nominated a fracking magnate and noted climate change sceptic, Chris Wright, as his energy secretary.

Amazon fires

The Amazon, spanning nine countries, is crucial to the fight against climate change due to its ability to absorb planet-warming carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.

However, it is also one of the areas most vulnerable to climate change and environmental degradation.

This year it experienced the worst wildfires in nearly two decades, fuelled by a severe drought blamed in part by climate experts on global warming.

A recent study showed that the Amazon rainforest had lost an area about the size of Germany and France combined to deforestation in four decades.

Brazil’s President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva has pledged to put a stop to illegal Amazon deforestation by 2030.

Experts have warned that a second Trump presidency could undo progress on the transition to green energy made under Biden, giving heavy polluters like China and India an excuse to scale back their own efforts.

During his campaign, Trump pledged to “drill, baby, drill” and increase fossil fuel extraction. He even brushed off climate change just days before the vote.