Brazil

In addition to football, samba and Copacabana, the Amazon rainforest is certainly one of the country's most famous trademarks. Home to almost 1.5 million species, Brazil is one of the world's most biodiverse countries (by way of comparison, Germany is only home to around 75,000 species) and thus offers a wealth of starting points with regard to conserving the world's biodiversity. Protecting tropical habitats is not only an effective way to achieve this goal; it also enables the CO2 emissions, which are largely produced from slash-and-burn operations, to be cut at the same time.

Tropical forest conservation is a matter that is increasingly close to the Brazilian government's heart. Indeed, over the last ten years there have been substantial successes with implementing international commitments. As a result, deforestation in the Amazon was reduced by around 80 % between 2004 and 2014. In this respect, Germany is helping to set up protected and indigenous areas, to develop a rural environmental data register as a basis for the new and progressive Brazilian Forest Protection Act and to create innovative, results-based finance mechanisms in forest management. The fact that KfW's first large-volume loan for tropical forest conservation amounting to 80 million EUR was agreed upon during the last government negotiations between Brazil and Germany underlines this tendency. In total, KfW Development Bank's portfolio for tropical forest conservation amounts to more than 500 million EUR.

In Brazil, increasing economic growth goes hand-in-hand with huge demand for energy. Together with lately repeated droughts the safeguarding of Brazil's future energy supply is thus a key foundation for the development of the country. At present, Brazil's power supply is mainly based on large-scale hydroelectric power plants and therefore has a relatively good carbon footprint, especially when compared with other emerging markets. Yet new large-scale hydroelectric power plants are often controversial because they can entail negative social and ecological impacts too. Thanks in no small measure to the energy turnaround, Germany is a technology leader with renewable energies and a pioneer in climate protection, offering technical know-how and investment funding for the rehabilitation of small hydroelectric power plants, solar and wind energy facilities. This expands the technology mix in Brazil. One example is the 1.4 MW photovoltaic plant, which was installed on the roof of the Mineirão stadium in the World Cup venue of Belo Horizonte as part of the "Solar World Cup 2014" project. KfW studies have been the impetus behind other solar stadium roofs. The German Society for International Cooperation (GIZ) has supported the process by advising government authorities and individual energy utilities. Energy efficiency is also attracting interest on the Brazilian side: a 150 million EUR project is currently in the pipeline in conjunction with the national promotional bank CAIXA and industry associations.

All in all, the relevance of renewable energies and energy efficiency in Brazil is reflected in a KfW Development Bank portfolio of almost 2 billion EUR.

Project example - Energy  (PDF, 134 KB, non-accessible)