MANAUS, Brazil — Joe Biden toured the drought-shrunken waters of the Amazon River’s greatest tributary Sunday as the first sitting American president to set foot in the legendary rainforest, while the incoming Trump administration seems poised to scale back the United States commitment to combating climate change.
The massive Amazon region, about the size of Australia, stores huge amounts of the world’s carbon dioxide, a greenhouse gas that drives climate change when it’s released into the atmosphere. But development is rapidly depleting the world’s largest tropical rainforest, and rivers are drying up.
Joined by Carlos Nobre, a Nobel Prize-winning scientist and expert on how climate change is harming the Amazon, and Biden climate adviser John Podesta, the president lifted in his helicopter over a stretch of the rainforest. Erosion along the route was severe as he flew over grounded ships in the Rio Negro River, fire damage and a wildlife refuge. The chopper traveled over the expansive meeting place of the Amazon River and the Negro, its main tributary.
Biden was then to meet local and indigenous leaders and visit an Amazonian museum.
His administration announced plans last year for a $500 million contribution to the Amazon Fund, the most significant international cooperation effort to preserve the rainforest, primarily financed by Norway.
