Germany's Scholz met Lula in Brazil

Germany promised an additional $33 million for the Brazilian Amazon ahead of a visit by Chancellor Olaf Scholz to the South American giant reeling from rainforest destruction under ex-president Jair Bolsonaro.

Scholz will be the first German chancellor to visit Brazil since 2015, and the first Western leader to meet leftist Lula since he became president on January 1 after four years of frosty relations with Brazil under far-right Bolsonaro.

Germany, along with the fund's biggest donor Norway, had halted payments after deforestation surged under climate-sceptic Bolsonaro.

Brazil will not send munitions to Ukraine to help in its war against the Russian invasion, says President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, during a joint press conference with German Chancellor Olaf Scholz.

"Brazil has no interest in passing on the munitions...Brazil is a country of peace," says Lula, who proposed instead to create a peace group to end the conflict.

"Brazil is the lung of the world. If it has problems, we all have to help it," Schulze said at a press conference in Brasilia.

Bolsonaro's four-year term was marked by a surge in fires and clear-cutting in the rainforest.

Average annual deforestation on his watch rose by 59.5 percent from the previous four years, and by 75.5 percent from the previous decade, according to government figures.