Lula lights up COP27, demands action
BANGKOK - French president Emmanuel Macron Yesterday backed a proposal by Brazilian presidentelect Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva to hold a 2025 United Nations climate conference in the Amazon rainforest. "I am here to say to all of you that Brazil is back in the world," said Lula as he received a jubilant welcome from hundreds of people at an Amazon region pavilion in the Red Sea resort of Sharm el-Sheikh.
"We will put up a very strong fight against illegal deforestation," he said, announcing the creation of an Indigenous people's ministry to protect the vast region's vulnerable communities.
"There is no climate security for the world without a protected Amazon," Lula said later in a speech. Lula arrived in Egypt on Tuesday and went straight into climate diplomacy, with meetings with US envoy John Kerry and China's Xie Zhenhua.
Kerry told a COP27 biodiversity panel on Wednesday that he was "really encouraged" by Lula's pledge to protect the Amazon, and that the United States would work with other nations to help protect the rainforest. "I fervently hope that we can have a COP in the Amazon so I fully support this initiative by Lula," Macron said during a trip to Bangkok for an Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit.
"I support the return of Brazil on an Amazon strategy. We need it," he added.
Lula, who will take office on 1 January, expressed a wish Wednesday at the COP27 climate meeting in Egypt to organise COP30 in the Amazon - an ecosystem essential to the balance of the global climate and biodiversity.
Brazil was previously selected to organise a COP summit in 2019, but did not follow through after the election of right-wing president Jair Bolsonaro at the end of 2018. "France is an IndoPacific power and an Amazonian power. The largest external border of France and Europe is the border of our Guyana with Brazil," Macron said.
Lula's election victory last month has paved the way for a rapprochement between Paris and Brasilia following strained relations under Lula's predecessor.
"I was waiting with great impatience for this moment so that we could relaunch a strategic partnership worthy of our history," said Macron, who was one of the first foreign leaders to congratulate Lula after his electoral win.
Paris sees Brazil as an "essential partner in Latin America", said French Secretary of State for European Affairs Laurence Boone on Tuesday.
In another boost to the UN climate process, the final communique from world leaders meeting at the Group of 20 talks in Bali, Indonesia, reaffirmed a promise to "pursue efforts" to curb global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels.
While G20 leaders meeting in Indonesia issued a final communique committing to pursue the more ambitious limits on global heating, action on the sidelines of fraught COP27 negotiations in Egypt generated momentum at the UN climate conference. The G20 document also addresses the most contentious issue at COP27, as leaders urged "progress" on "loss and damage" - the costs of climate impacts already being felt - though without saying which approach they favoured.
Developing nations are demanding the creation of a loss and damage fund, through which rich polluters would compensate them for the destruction caused by climate-linked natural disasters.
But the United States and the European Union have suggested using existing channels for climate finance instead of creating a new one.
In another COP27 announcement, the EU said it would dedicate more than US$1 billion in climate funding to help countries in Africa boost their resilience in the face of the accelerating impact of global warming. In his speech, however, Lula took a dig at developed countries for failing to fulfil a pledge to provide U$100 billion in aid annually from 2020 for developing nations to green their economies and adapt to future impacts.
"I'm also back to demand what was promised" at past climate talks, he said. The president-elect, who previously served from 2003 to 2010, threw his weight behind the idea of a climate impacts compensation fund.
"We very urgently need financial mechanisms to remedy losses and damages caused by climate change," said Lula, who made a spectacular political comeback after serving jail time for corruption.
Latin America's most populous country grew more isolated under Bolsonaro, analysts say, in part due to his permissive policies towards deforestation and exploitation of the Amazon, the preservation of which is seen as critical to fighting global warming.
Brazil is home to 60% of the Amazon, which spans eight countries and acts as a massive sink for carbon emissions. The incoming Lula administration wants the United States to contribute to the Amazon Fund, considered one of the main tools to reduce deforestation in the planet's biggest tropical forest.
Following Lula's victory, the fund's main contributors, Norway and Germany, announced they would participate again, after freezing aid in 2019 in the wake of Bolsonaro's election.