About 50 representatives of Chinese provinces in the Pan Pearl River Delta, are due to arrive in Brasilia on Monday, 6 March, to meet with Brazilian government representatives in the areas of trade promotion, water management, environmental protection and sustainability.

There will be two days of meetings in the federal capital. The first meeting of the delegation, headed by Jackson Chang, president of the Macau Trade and Investment Promotion Institute (IPIM), will be at the Brazilian Agency for Export and Investment Promotion (Apex), IPIM’s counterpart in Brazil, which will present the Brazilian government’s experiences in the area of the green and sustainable economy.

In addition to a presentation of Apex, there will also be an exhibition of representatives of the Sugar Cane Industry Association (Unica), focused on biofuel theme and its relationship to sustainability.

Founded in 1977, the Unica represents the main units of sugar production, ethanol (alcohol fuel) and bioelectricity in the Centre-South region of Brazil, including São Paulo.

Member companies account for over 50% of national production of sugarcane and 60% of ethanol production. In the 2015/16 harvest, Brazil produced about 617 million tons of sugarcane, the raw material used to produce 31 million tonnes of sugar and 28 billion litres of ethanol.

Apex recently created the “China Group” which covers the actions related to this country, which is Brazil’s largest trading partner.

Since June 2016 the China Group has been chaired since June 2016 by the diplomat Roberto Jaguaribe, who was previously ambassador of Brazil to China and Mongolia.

At the same time, the agency that was born under the Ministry of Industry, Trade and Services, is now part of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, in order to expand the development of business strategies.

The members of the delegation are also due to visit the Operational Management Centre of the Amazon Protection System (Censipam), linked to the Ministry of Defence, and the hydro-meteorological warning system. This work, carried out in the north of the country – the Amazon basin – is part of strategic monitoring action of the area by the Brazilian government. The institution aims to manage the Amazon protection system (SIPAM).

The Product Director of Censipam, Pericles Cardim, told Macauhub that there will be a more detailed presentation of the monitoring to predict natural disasters such as floods, drought and severe storms and other natural phenomena.

Among the partners are the National Institute for Space Research (INPE), the Brazilian Geological Survey (CPRM) and the National Water Agency (ANA), which should will also be visited by the delegation in Brasilia.

Sipam has three GOES Reception satellite stations and and two NOAA/MODIS/Metop satellite stations installed in the regional centres of Porto Velho (RO), Belém (PA) and Manaus (AM) and 11 weather radars and 50 surface meteorological stations distributed in major cities of the states of Mato Grosso (MT), Tocantins (TO), Roraima (RR), Amazonas (AM), Rondonia (RO), Acre (AC), Pará (PA), Amapá (AP) and Maranhão (MA).

The delegation will have the opportunity to visit the waters of the Amazon basin during the visit, on Wednesday (8 March), to Manaus, the capital of Amazonas state. The city is located in the centre of the largest rainforest in the world – the Amazon – and at the confluence of the Negro and Solimões rivers, which, when they meet, form the great Amazon River. The Rio Negro is the largest tributary of the left bank of the Amazon River, the longest black water river in the world and the second largest in volume of water – second only to the Amazon itself.

The Amazon region is the largest river basin in the world, covering more than seven million square kilometres (4 million in Brazil alone).

Before going to Manaus, the delegation is scheduled to attend a meeting with the Ministry of Environment, which will be attended by representatives of the Ministry of Planning, Development and Management. The programme includes the presentation of themes of Brazilian environmental policy, such as the Action Plan for Prevention and Control of Deforestation in the Legal Amazon (PPCDAm) and water policy.

In relation to the Ministry of Planning, Development and Management the approach will involve projects focused on environmental protection and rural development, external financing, which is of interest to the Chinese delegation.

The delegation visiting Brazil is made up of representatives of the “9+2″groups, the Pan Pearl River Delta. There are nine provinces in southern China – Guangdong, Sichuan, Fujian, Hainan, Guangxi, Yunnan, Hunan, Guizhou and Jiangxi – and the special administrative regions of Hong Kong and Macau. The delta region, one of the most developed in mainland China, is formed by numerous rivers, including the Pearl River.