Brazil offers to cut deforestation by 40 percent in exchange for $1 billion from U.S.

Forest burning in the Amazon.
(Image credit: NELSON ALMEIDA/AFP via Getty Images)

Brazil says it will cut back on deforestation — for a price.

Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro has sent a proposal to the Biden administration that involves reducing deforestation by 40 percent in exchange for $1 billion, The Wall Street Journal reports. Bolsonaro is often criticized as a "negligent steward" of the vulnerable Amazon rainforest, the Journal notes, but he and others, including residents of the Amazon region, have argued the only way to save the rainforest is by funding "nascent bio-industries" like fish farming "that would provide alternatives to poor farmers who slash and burn to raise crops and cattle."

Subscribe to The Week

Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

SUBSCRIBE & SAVE
https://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/flexiimages/jacafc5zvs1692883516.jpg

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

Sign up
To continue reading this article...
Continue reading this article and get limited website access each month.
Get unlimited website access, exclusive newsletters plus much more.
Cancel or pause at any time.
Already a subscriber to The Week?
Not sure which email you used for your subscription? Contact us
Tim O'Donnell

Tim is a staff writer at The Week and has contributed to Bedford and Bowery and The New York Transatlantic. He is a graduate of Occidental College and NYU's journalism school. Tim enjoys writing about baseball, Europe, and extinct megafauna. He lives in New York City.