Agencies
US President Joe Biden paid an historic trip to the Amazon rainforest on Sunday to promote his record on fighting climate change, insisting it would survive Donald Trump’s return to the White House.
Biden flew over the jungle by helicopter and met with Indigenous leaders in the Brazilian city of Manaus on the penultimate leg of a valedictory South American tour which has been overshadowed by Trump’s election win.
The 81-year-old Democrat is the first sitting US president to visit the Amazon.
“Folks, we don’t have to choose between an environment and the economy. We can do both. We’ve proven it back home,” Biden said in a short speech in a nature reserve, framed by vivid green forest cover. Without referring to Trump by name, he said he would leave his Republican successor and his country “a strong foundation to build on, if they choose to do so.”
“It’s true—some may seek to deny or delay the clean energy revolution that’s underway in America. But nobody—nobody—can reverse it,” he declared. On Sunday, the White House announced that the US had hit its target of increasing bilateral climate financing to $11 billion a year.
It said that the figure reached this year was six times what the US was providing when Biden took over from Trump in 2021. The money, which helps developing countries adapt to climate change, has made “the United States the largest bilateral provider of climate finance in the world,” the White House said.
Trump’s return to the White House looms large over Biden’s last major foreign tour as president, which began with a gathering of Asian-Pacific partners in Lima and ends with a G20 summit in Rio de Janeiro starting Monday.
Climate financing for developing nations is one of the topics on the G20 table, with calls for the world’s richest countries to rescue stalled UN climate talks taking place at the same time in Azerbaijan.
