Brazil’s Lula, world leaders bolster UN climate talks
President-elect calls for hosting 2025 climate talks in the 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 communique 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 threw his weight behind calls for the creation of a fund to compensate developing countries for the costly damage from climate-linked natural disasters.
“We very urgently need financial mechanisms to remedy losses and damages caused by climate change,” Lula told the UN’s COP27 climate conference, where the topic has divided rich and developing nations.
Battle against Deforestation
Lula also vowed to fight deforestation in his country, saying “there is no climate security for the world without a protected Amazon.”
Lula kicked off a day of events yesterday with 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 Al Shaikh. “Brazil was not born to be an isolated country,” said Lula.
We very urgently need financial mechanisms to remedy losses and damages caused by climate change... There is no climate security for the world without a protected Amazon.”
Luiz Inacio Lula Da Silva | Brazilian president-elect
Kerry ‘pleased’
Kerry told a COP27 biodiversity panel yesterday that the United States would work with other nations to help protect the Amazon.
“I was pleased last night to meet with president-elect Lula and was really encouraged by the ways in which he talked about for once and for all getting it right... in order to preserve the Amazon,” Kerry said.
Under Bolsonaro, a staunch ally of agribusiness, average annual deforestation increased 75 per cent compared with the previous decade.