Joint press release - 8th EU-Brazil High Level Political Dialogue on the Environment Dimension of Sustainable Development on 16 October 2020 (virtual meeting)
The EU and Brazil held their 8th EU-Brazil High Level Political Dialogue on the Environment Dimension of Sustainable Development on 16 October 2020 (virtual meeting). Discussions were fruitful and covered key environmental issues of common interest. The Dialogue is part of various contacts and forms of cooperation between the EU and Brazil on environment and conservation issues, including an exchange on 29 July between Brazilian Environment Minister Ricardo Salles and EU Environment Commissioner Virginijus Sinkevičius, as well as EU engagement with the National Council for the Legal Amazon. On the EU side, the Dialogue was chaired by Astrid Schomaker, Director of Global Sustainable Development in the Directorate-General for Environment of the European Commission, accompanied by Ambassador Ignacio Ybáñez, Head of the EU Delegation to Brazil. Other EU representatives contributed to different thematic parts of the agenda. For Brazil, the Dialogue was chaired by Leonardo Cleaver de Athayde, Director of the Environment Department of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, accompanied by Eduardo Lunardelli Novaes, Deputy Executive Secretary of the Ministry of Environment, as well as other representatives of the same Ministries and the Ministry of Regional Development intervening in different parts of the agenda.
The Dialogue tackled key environmental aspects of the bilateral and multilateral relations, with biodiversity and forests, and water and waste management figuring prominently in the exchanges. The main focus was on three topics (1) biodiversity, bio-economy, sustainable management of natural resources, forests and its challenges; (2) circular economy, in the context of sustainable production and consumption patterns, and resource efficiency; (3) bilateral cooperation on water and sanitation.
Both sides agreed on the importance of maintaining a permanent exchange of views and on the need to identify further concrete areas of future bilateral cooperation in the field of environment sustainability and related issues.