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 Brazil is going to get an US$ 1.3 billion loan from the World Bank for the First Programmatic Development Policy Loan for Sustainable Environmental Management, supporting Brazil's ongoing efforts to improve its environmental management system.
The policy also is geared to integrate sustainability in the development agenda of key sectors such as forest management, water and renewable energy. The initiative will also act as an umbrella for Brazil's climate change agenda across sectors.
"The Brazilian government has been working strongly towards the development and implementation of public policies that address sustainable development so that economic growth occurs without loss to our rich biodiversity," said Guido Mantega, Minister of Finance.
"This requires a commitment from all levels of government, whether federal, state or municipal, paying special attention to social programs, many of which include programs for sustainable growth," he added.
"In this context, the set of institutional reforms and policies laid down in the Multiyear Plan (PPA) and the Growth Acceleration Plan (PAC) is essential to ensure that Brazil achieve economic growth, preserve the environment and become a socially just nation."
In few countries is the ecosystem as crucial to development and people's welfare as in Brazil. The country has one-third of the world's tropical rain forests, the largest reservoir of fresh water (20%), one of the longest coastlines (more than 8,500 km), and savanna with the greatest biodiversity in the world.
A significant part of Brazil's economy relies on the use of natural resources for production inputs. Due to the importance of its natural resource base, Brazil faces major challenges to strengthen the sustainable use of its natural resources.
Key environmental issues in Brazil to be addressed by the program include: deforestation from unsustainable use of natural resources in the Amazon rainforest; conservation of the remaining Atlantic Forest, water quality and availability; and increased energy demand, straining Brazil's clean energy matrix.
"The social and economic cost of environmental destruction is high. Smooth coordination of policies and procedures within the Brazilian environmental management system, combined with an increased commitment from the financial sector to long-term sustainability, is key to guaranteeing that specific actions and investments in the area can achieve the best possible results, ensuring growth that is environmentally sustainable and socially inclusive," said Makhtar Diop, World Bank Country Director for Brazil.
The program supports Brazil's commitment to better environmental and poverty outcomes while implementing a model of accelerated competitiveness and growth. This will be done by emphasizing incentives, such as efforts to increase the value of standing forests, and economic instruments, such as increasing the environmental profile of development finance facilities as integral parts of the Government's environmental management strategy.
This will promote the sustainable management of agricultural lands, forests and water resources; reduce deforestation in the Amazon; reduce the environmental degradation of land, water and other resources which are key determinants of the well-being of the poor; and promote renewable energy.
Mercopress
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The small, coastal town of Condé is located just a twenty minute's drive from João Pessoa, the capital of Paraíba. The Northeast of Brazil has historically been a place of encounter and mixing between peoples. For millenia groups of indigenous people fished, farmed, migrated and sometimes fought along this large, fertile area. 
The Brazilian diplo-MÁ-cia (bad diplomacy) carries on its accelerated course towards the non-acknowledgment of human rights, although sometimes it takes pleasure in saying that it does precisely the opposite. The visit of Iran's president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, is another example of a diplomatic omission that verges on hypocrisy. 
On July 4, 2006, representatives of Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay and Uruguay met in Caracas to sign the protocol for the entrance of Venezuela into the Southern Common Market (Mercosur). After two and a half years, the protocol was approved by the legislative bodies of Argentina and Uruguay, and as of now it may be only days away from being ratified by the continent's economic megalith, Brazil. 
Some sectors of the fight against AIDS have suggested that Thabo Mbeki, the former president of South Africa, committed genocide through his absence from the fight against the illness in his country throughout his two terms. 
One hundred and eleven years after Brazil abolished slavery, the number of workers deprived of their freedom is still huge. They raise cattle, produce charcoal, sugar cane or timber. Some of them, most undocumented Bolivians, work in basements of small apparel factories in São Paulo and other metropolis. 
On November 7, 2009 a few friends and I had an opportunity to take a look inside a Brazilian jail outside the city of Rio de Janeiro. We were able to take some amateur footage of our experience on video (see link below). It's no surprise, of course, that the typical Brazilian jail lacks some of the functionality of those in North America or Europe, but our experience that day was quite shocking. 
Depletion of the Amazon Rainforest is not a new concern facing environmentalists, biologists, ecologists, and a growing number of the Amazonian indigenous peoples. For decades they have feared for the fate of the world's most biologically diverse and species-rich hothouse. 
Geisy Arruda made history this week in Brazil, but for all the wrong reasons. What began as a poorly planned fashion statement has become a worldwide tale. Geisy decided to wear a pink mini-dress to her private college in São Paulo state, and after that, all hell broke loose. 
The push of vigilante groups in Rio de Janeiro's favelas (shantytowns) in the last three years is the most important and alarming information of the just-released study by the Rio de Janeiro University's Violence Research Center (Nupev-Uerj). 
A dispute over drug trafficking territory in Rio de Janeiro has intensified lately, leaving in its wake unprecedented acts of violence, such as the downing of a police helicopter in the northern zone of the city on October 17. Three policemen died and another two were injured. This event has drawn the attention of the international media, who are raising the issue of public security for the 2016 Olympics to be held in Rio.
Brazil should get that money from the Bank Of Chavez.
Keep it all in the Family.
What happened to the Mericor Bank of South America?
Dictator Chavez was going to finance it.