Noting that Brazilian authorities have significantly reduced deforestation over the last years, Norway will contribute US$1 Billion to Brazil’s Amazon Fund over the next seven years starting with US$20 Million this year. This makes Norway the first international contributor to the Amazon Fund, a major Brazilian effort to sharply curb deforestation of the world’s largest rainforest and home to the greatest number of plant and animal species.

Norway’s contribution to the Amazon Fund is an important part of the Government’s climate and forest program, launched by Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg at the UN climate conference in Bali in December 2007. “Efforts against deforestation may give us the largest, quickest and cheapest reductions in greenhouse gas emissions,” said Prime Minister Stoltenberg. “Norway has to reduce its own emissions, and at the same time we have to contribute to reduce emissions of greenhouse gases in other parts of the world.”

Under President Luis Inacio Lula da Silva’s leadership, the Brazilian government wants to raise $21 billion through 2021 from foreign donors, but he steadfastly insists that preserving the Amazon rainforest is Brazil’s repsonsibility. Donations to this fund will be used for reforestation and conservation of the Amazon rainforest, clean energy and environmental education, as well as reduction of greenhouse gas emmissions. The fund will also support scientific research, sustainable development projects and help further work on the cultivation of drugs from plants.

The Amazon Rainforest, also known as the Amazon Basin, covers 1.7 billion acres (seven million square kilometers) located within Brazil, Peru, Colombia, Venezuela, Ecuador, Guyana, Suriname and French Guiana. Brazil contains 60 percent of the Amazon basin, which is home to over half of Earth’s remaining rainforests. The Congo in Africa is home to the world’s second largest rainforest.