With the first U.N. climate talks in the Amazon set for November, Brazil is fast-tracking a series of controversial decisions that undercut its green rhetoric, revealing mounting political pressure on the federal environmental agency and widening divisions within President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva’s cabinet.

Environment ministers of the Group of 20 nations agreed Thursday to support the creation of funding sources for ecosystem services, acknowledging Brazil’s proposal to establish a trust fund for forest conservation.

The amount of deforestation in Brazil’s Amazon went down by nearly half in the last year, according to government satellite data released Wednesday.