The United States is ignoring a Mexican proposal to link immigration and “seed life” at the climate summit

Before it even got to their ears, President Joseph Biden’s environmental team ruled out that the United States would accept the plan proposed by Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador and provide work visas to Central America in exchange for a contribution to reforestation. At least at the Climate Leaders Summit that starts on Thursday.

The Biden administration refused to link the immigration proposal to the “sow life” plan promoted by the Mexican president. “This is not a conversation about immigration, but a conversation about climate change,” a senior US official said of the suggestion he launched Sunday on social media.

“For us, the climate agenda has to be seen on its own and on the basis of its merits and how to advance it,” the senior official said during a telephone interview with reporters to present the summit’s agenda. A plan to reforestation in all parts of the world, but they ruled out that it is linked to the immigration agenda, which in recent months is going through a critical moment with record arrests on the borders between the two countries.

“We certainly see value in natural solutions related to planting trees. If we look at the climate change agenda, the issue of reforestation is a priority.” However, “we are not focusing on the intersection of the issues. For us, the climate agenda has to be approached on its own, based on its own merits, and moving forward, which is not a conversation, in our view, about migration. The official insisted it was a dialogue about climate change.

On the impact of the proposal announced Sunday by Lopez Obrador in a video that was broadcast on social networks, the US environmental official said: “We heard recently [la propuesta de López Obrador] It does not seem that I have had the opportunity to participate in intensive discussions in Mexico or between Mexico and the United States. “

At the virtual meeting to be held on Thursday and Friday, Lopez Obrador announced that he would propose the implementation of the “Sembrando Vida” program in Central America. His invention project has so far planted a million trees of fruit and wood in the south of the country and has given direct aid to more than 400,000 people, but has drawn criticism from important environmental groups, seeing how it is being paid with official money for one person. One of the largest deforestation in recent decades.

La pretensión de López Obrador es convencer a Biden para que Estados Unidos pague la siembra de árboles en Centroamérica durante tres años para que después de ese tiempo, las personas inscritas en el programa, “de tengan seajo automechtá tárabes en el programa de tenisgane According to the president, “after three years of obtaining a work visa, with good behavior, they will have the right to apply for American citizenship,” as announced Sunday under the Chiapas tree.

According to official data, since the plan was launched two years ago, more than a million trees have been planted in the states of Chiapas, Tabasco, Oaxaca, Yucatan, Campeche and Quintana Roo. Direct aid ranging from $ 100 to $ 250 (about 2,000 to 5,000 pesos) was delivered manually to nearly 400,000 farmers with holdings of more than 2.5 hectares who reforest their lands with fruit trees or convert them to wood. He said: “This helps people not to emigrate, and it helps the environment a lot because we can plant three million hectares in three years and give up to 1.3 million jobs to the brothers of Central America and Mexicans as well.”

The problem, critical of environmental organizations, is that many owners cut down rainforests for reforestation with trees that are more economically profitable but out of place. Also denounced, trees of other species are being planted en masse in Calakmul, one of the world’s most important biosphere reserves.

Biden’s two-day summit, which begins around tomorrow, will bring together 40 leaders, including Lopez Obrador, and try to regain US leadership when it comes to tackling the problems caused by climate change, after the door closes. Environmental plans. The meeting comes within the framework of preparations for the next United Nations global summit on climate change to be held in November in Scotland (COP26).

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