Bolsonaro confirms Minister Salles as Brazil’s representative at COP-26 in 2021

In his weekly broadcast in social networks, President Jair Bolsonaro announced Ricardo Salles as Brazil’s representative at the next Climate Conference (COP-26), scheduled for November 2021. Experts saw the gesture as a sign of support to the Minister of the Environment, who has been a target of strong national and international pressure due to his anti-environmental stance at the head of the ministry.

Salles, who took part in the broadcast with the Minister of Mines and Energy, Bento Albuquerque, stated that cooperation “in concrete terms” with external agents can only be possible if other countries send resources to Brazil. “The group, the countries, initiatives, they have to send resources to help us. It’s no use just criticizing for free. Resources must also come”, he said, according to an transcript by the newspaper O Estado de S. Paulo.

Salles’ environmental policy, however, led precisely to the paralysis of foreign donations destined to Brazilian environmental protection, like the imbroglio of the Amazon Fund, who came to a halt in donations in 2019, when Norway and Germany, the main donors, withdrew their contributions because of their strong criticism of the policies adopted by Salles, then president of the fund, which is now under the command of Vice President Hamilton Mourão.