COP26 President to speak on the Amazon during visit to Bolivia and Brazil

RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – The president of the United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP26), Briton Alok Sharma, will visit Bolivia and Brazil next week to stress the need for urgent global action at the summit and also to discuss the conservation of the Amazon.

Sharma will visit Bolivia’s eastern region of Santa Cruz on August 2. After completing his agenda in this country, he will travel to Brazil, according to a press release issued Friday (30) by the British Embassy in Bolivia.

In a statement quoted in the bulletin, Sharma said he was “delighted to visit Bolivia and Brazil next week” and expressed his interest in knowing “what both countries need” to “help them present ambitious climate action plans to keep alive the goal of limiting the temperature increase” to 1.5 degrees Celsius.

“And, of course, to discuss how we can protect the Amazon – one of the jewels of the natural world, shared by both nations – by showing that a future of sustainable forestry is within our reach if we work together to achieve it,” the COP26 president said, according to the statement.

According to the same source, Sharma’s agenda in Bolivia will include a meeting with the country’s president, Luis Arce, and vice president David Choquehuanca, as well as a visit to a community in Santa Cruz.

He will also meet with indigenous communities, young people, and Bolivian civil society organizations and then travel to Brazil, the press release adds.

The communiqué specifies that the visit follows Bolivia’s participation in the climate talks held last week. Sharma brought together 50 countries in London, “giving way to a renewed common vision for climate action”.

The COP26 president will emphasize the summit’s key objective “to get finance flowing to climate action,” the bulletin adds.

In a virtual conference offered last June, Vice President Choquehuanca requested the support of the “peoples of the world” for the proposal drawn up by Bolivia to “reorient” the discussions on climate change at COP26, to be held in the Scottish city of Glasgow between November 1 and 12.