Brazil, Indonesia and Congo signed on Monday (14) a trilateral agreement that formalizes the creation of the "Alliance of Forests", which seeks to deepen cooperation on the environmental agenda and the protection of tropical forests. In practice, the new alliance should work to put into effect mechanisms for payments from countries and companies to countries and states that have results in reducing deforestation and protecting forests.

Together, the three countries hold 52% of the world's native tropical forests, and are, therefore, defined by experts as crucial to the climate crisis, the main theme of the 27th United Nations Climate Change Conference, COP 27, held in Sharm el-Sheikh.

Present at the COP 27, the Minister of the Environment, Joaquim Leite, highlighted in an interview to the O Liberal Group the initiative as a landmark to advance in the definition of values and regulation of the carbon market.

"It is an agreement between Congo, Indonesia and Brazil, which are holders of the main tropical forests in the world. This agreement foresees several actions towards the protection of these areas of native forests, but also to encourage criteria to value these areas. We need to monetize these areas, which have to have economic value. Brazil is in the vanguard on this issue. At the last G20 meeting I had the opportunity to talk to the Indonesian Ministry of Environment and they were very interested in accelerating this process and taking the native forests framework that we have done in Brazil", he said.

According to the Minister, this is one of the initiatives that has been addressed by Brazil and will now act in an articulated manner with the other two countries. "There are several actions, which started iin 2019 and now we have the native forest carbon credit, in addition to the environmental asset. This is what we designed and we will transfer this technology, this public policy that we, from the federal government, have built with the states - now to countries like Indonesia and Congo - and guarantee that we have minimum criteria and can value these areas and remunerate those who take care of them", argued Joaquim Leite.

Also according to the minister, the Amazon States will benefit the most from the new initiative. "The Amazon has a great benefit that is the carbon credit from native forest, which the other biomes have less, but the Amazon specifically will benefit from this market. We created last year for the global market, for this year the regulated market and certainly Amazon will take advantage of this opportunity to make a standing forest have economic value, be recognized and remunerated", he highlighted.