Exploring the U.S. Corporate Footprint in Brazil

 The United States and Brazil have worked together for 200 years and face many of the same natural problems. Our two countries are still working together to protect and preserve the earth and encourage long-term economic growth. At their meeting at the White House on February 10, 2023, Presidents Biden and Lula told the high-level U.S.-Brazil Climate Change Working Group, which was created in 2015, to get back together as soon as possible to talk about ways they can work together to fight deforestation and degradation, improve the bioeconomy, increase the use of clean energy, make adaptation stronger, and promote low-emission farming methods. As part of these efforts, the US said it would work with Congress to fund programs that will protect and preserve the Brazilian Amazon. This includes giving the Amazon Fund its first funding. John Kerry, who is the Special Presidential Envoy for Climate Change, said he would go to Brazil in early 2023 to talk about what should be done next.

The United States and Brazil work together on the environment to solve important problems like

To fight the climate disaster, we need to set high goals for lowering greenhouse gas emissions, share best practices, and help a wide range of Brazilian stakeholders build their skills. Investing in and building up the skills of Brazilian organizations that work on fire protection, investigation, and management programs is one way to help with these issues.

Using sustainable development and investment to protect the Amazon forest and its wildlife is a big part of supporting sustainable forest economies. Keeping the city's environment safe by sharing knowledge and the best ways to do things and by spending in building up institutions' skills, especially when it comes to managing water. Fighting conservation crimes by working together to find, investigate, and prosecute conservation crimes, as well as by improving teamwork at the national and local levels and giving Brazilian government officials and communities more law enforcement training. Keeping environmental disasters from happening and how to handle them by sharing information and best practices, working together to handle and look into incidents, and making regulatory systems better where they apply. And Working with the Brazilian government and local communities to improve the use and management of public land and protected areas and boost their long-term economic success is one way to support planning and management of public lands for conservation and tourism. Weather Changes Both the US and Brazil have promised to cut their net greenhouse gas emissions by a large amount. Brazil wants to hit net zero emissions by 2050 and stop illegal deforestation by 2028. The US and Brazil are always talking about how to stop illegal logging in the Brazilian Amazon and other problems related to climate change.

President Biden signed the most important climate law to date in August 2022

It was the single largest investment in climate and clean energy solutions in U.S. history. The goal of this new law is to quickly develop clean energy technologies and make alternative energy sources easier to get to, more reliable, and safer. The first business in Brazil to join the First Movers Coalition was CBA – Companhia Brasileira de Alumínio (CBAV3) in November 2022. The coalition was started by U.S. President Joe Biden at the United Nations Climate Conference (COP26).

How to Stop and Manage Fires

With a total of $5 million, the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) and the U.S. Forest Service (USFS) work to improve communities in the Amazon's ability to avoid and control fires. USAID is helping to fund a US$500,000 fire management program that will help the Brazilian Environment Ministry (MMA) learn how to find fires' sources, control them, stop them, and let people know what caused them.

Forest economies that can last

The main environmental program run by USAID is called the Bilateral Partnership for Conservation of Amazon Biodiversity (PCAB). It gives between US$10 and 15 million a year and helps fund the Partnership Platform for the Amazon (PPA), which brings together businesses and non-governmental groups to come up with new ways to protect and develop the Brazilian Amazon in a way that is sustainable. The International Center for Tropical Agriculture (CIAT), which is a USAID/Brazil PSE partner, also gave the Amazon Biodiversity Fund (ABF) US$15 million to start it off. ABF wants to raise about $50 million by the beginning of 2023. USAID funds a program that helps build long-lasting value chains by managing Indigenous lands and other Protected Areas (Unidades de Conservação) in the states of Amazonas, Rondonia, and Pará. The program focuses on developing value chains for Brazil nuts, pirarucu fish, açaí fruit, community-based managed timber, and community-based tourism. About 500 farmers and 400 traditional and Indigenous communities gain from the activities that happen on 26 Indigenous lands and 22 conservation units. In the past year, our relationship with USAID stopped more than 30 million tons of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, which is the same as burning almost 80 million barrels of oil. It also made better use of 45 million hectares of land in the Brazilian Amazon. 189 Protected Areas were helped by USAID funding, and 83% of those were Indigenous Peoples' lands.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the MMA signed an agreement (MOU) in January 2020

This allowed them to work together and teach more than 400 Brazilian experts in water and wastewater management, sharing their knowledge and the best ways to do things. About a quarter of the world's food is grown in Brazil and the United States. In addition to helping to ensure world food security, they have a history of coming up with new ways to be more sustainable, which is important for our future. Both countries are very big and have a lot of people who want to buy things from them. This makes them attractive to investors who want to grow crops to sell abroad. In some ways, they are rivals, but in many other ways, they help each other. They have been working hard over the past few years to make farming more sustainable and to reduce the amount of carbon dioxide that is released into the air by transportation. Research and development are part of these separate and joint attempts to adapt to climate change and lower greenhouse gas emissions from farming. Twenty-five years ago, the United States and Brazil were the leaders in biotechnology. They helped to create transgenics to improve genes. Brazil was able to protect 21 million hectares, save 10 billion liters of water, and avoid 70 million tons of carbon emissions thanks to transgenics. These technologies made plants stronger and less dependent on pesticides. Gains in productivity raised the amount of grain grown each year from 80 million tons to 310 million tons. Bio-inputs can be used instead of chemical fertilizers and herbicides in the future, which could be a good way for Brazil and the US to work together. Some of the benefits would be more organic matter in the soil, more wildlife, better water management, and the storage of carbon. Both countries are already working to find alternatives to nitrogen fertilizers. A lot of crops in the US, like corn and cotton, use these chemicals.