Joe Biden will become the first sitting US president to set foot in the Amazon rainforest during a brief stop on Sunday in the Brazilian city of Manaus, as the United States is expected to scale back its commitment to fighting climate change under the new administration of Donald Trump. .

The immense Amazon – which is roughly the size of Australia – stores huge amounts of the world’s carbon dioxide, a greenhouse gas that causes climate change, even as it is rapidly being deforested.

Biden is expected to take an aerial tour over part of the world’s largest rainforest, meet with local and indigenous leaders and visit an Amazon museum as he seeks to highlight his commitment to preserving the region.

The Biden administration announced plans last year to contribute $500 million to the Amazon Fund, the largest international cooperative effort to preserve the rainforest, financed primarily by Norway.

So far, the U.S. government said it has provided $50 million, according to a July statement from its embassy in Brazil, adding that it would “continue to work with Congress to secure remaining funding for the Amazon Fund and activities related until 2028”.

“It is important for a sitting president to visit the Amazon. … It shows a personal commitment on the part of the president,” said Suely Araújo, former director of Brazil’s environmental protection agency and public policy coordinator for the nonprofit Climate Observatory. “That said, we cannot expect any concrete results from this visit.”

She doubts that “a single cent” will be paid to the Amazon Fund in January.

The Trump administration is highly unlikely to prioritize the Amazon – or anything related to climate change. The Republican president-elect has already said he will again withdraw from the Paris Agreement, a global pact struck to avert the threat of catastrophic climate change, after Biden reaffirmed his commitment to the agreement.

Trump called climate change a “hoax” and said he would eliminate the Biden administration’s energy efficiency regulations.

The Amazon is the world’s largest tropical rainforest, home to indigenous communities and 10% of Earth’s biodiversity. It also regulates humidity throughout South America. About two-thirds of the Amazon is in Brazil and scientists say its devastation poses a catastrophic threat to the planet.

The forest has been suffering for two years from a historic drought that has dried up waterways, isolated thousands of riverside communities and hampered the ability of residents in riparian areas to fish. It also gave way to wildfires that burned an area larger than Switzerland and choked cities near and far with smoke.

When Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva took office last year, he marked a shift in environmental policy from his predecessor, the far-right Jair Bolsonaro. Bolsonaro has prioritized agribusiness expansion over forest protection and has weakened environmental agencies, causing deforestation to reach its highest level in 15 years.

Lula has pledged “zero deforestation” by 2030, although his term ends at the end of 2026. Forest loss in the Brazilian Amazon fell 30.6% in the 12 months through July compared to the previous year, bringing deforestation to its lowest level in nine years. according to official data released last week.

During that 12-month period, the Amazon lost 6,288 square kilometers (2,428 square miles), roughly the size of the U.S. state of Delaware. However, this data fails to account for this year’s increase in destruction, which will only be included in next year’s figures.

Despite success in combating deforestation in the Amazon, Lula’s government has been criticized by environmentalists for supporting projects that could harm the region, such as paving a highway that cuts through an ancient area and could encourage logging and oil drilling near the mouth of the Amazon. River and construction of a railway to transport soybeans to Amazonian ports.

Biden is making the Amazon visit as part of a six-day trip to South America, the first to the continent of his presidency.

On Sunday morning, he ends his visit to Lima, Peru, where he participated in the annual Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit and met with Chinese President Xi Jinping.

After his brief stop in Manaus, he heads to Rio de Janeiro for this year’s Group of 20 summit.