Brazil’s Lula offers to host UN climate talks in Amazon region

UN CLIMATE talks got a boost yesterday as Brazilian president-elect Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva launched the country back into the battle to curb warming and global leaders reaffirmed key pledges.

With G20 leaders issuing a final communiqué committing to pursue the more ambitious limits on global heating, momentum at the climate meeting in Egypt was generated at the sidelines of the fraught negotiations.

Lula made a call to host the 2025 climate talks in the Amazon region, in his first international trip since defeating outgoing far-right President Jair Bolsonaro, who presided over years of rampant Amazon deforestation.

“I am here to say to all of you that Brazil is back in the world,” said Lula, as he received a hero’s welcome from hundreds of people applauding him at an Amazon region pavilion in the Red Sea resort of Sharm el-Sheikh.

“Brazil was not born to be an isolated country,” said Lula.

“We will put up a very strong fight against illegal deforestation,” he said, announcing the creation of a ministry of indigenous people to protect the vast region’s vulnerable communities.

Lula had climate diplomacy meetings with US envoy John Kerry and China’s Xie Zhenhua.

Kerry told a COP27 biodiversity panel yesterday that the US would work with other nations to help protect the Amazon. Under Bolsonaro, a staunch ally of agribusiness, average annual deforestation increased 75% compared with the previous decade.

A final communiqué from world leaders meeting at the G20 talks in Bali, Indonesia included key promises to pursue efforts to curb global warming to 1.5ºC above preindustrial levels, a safer limit according to scientists. The document, which reiterated a commitment to phase out “inefficient” fossil fuel subsidies over the medium term, was welcomed by observers as a way to galvanise the climate talks as they enter the final days.

The G20 meeting was also the stage of a crucial meeting between US President Joe Biden and China’s Xi Jinping, where the two leaders agreed to resume their climate co-operation.

Ani Dasgupta, head of the World Resources Institute, said positive signals from leaders at the G20 “should put wind in the sails” of negotiators in Egypt. Bolsonaro did not attend the summit.