Lula insists “Brazil is back” at UN climate summit
By Stuart Braun
16 November 2022
(DW) – One of the most-watched visitors to the UN climate summit in Egypt this week has been incoming Brazilian president, Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva — more commonly referred to as Lula.
With his successful election campaign having included a promise to arrest record deforestation in the Amazon, Lula carried huge expectations into the yearly climate summit aimed at curbing planet-heating emissions.
“The world is missing Brazil,” said Lula in a speech at COP27 on Wednesday, adding that “Brazil is back.” He stated his intention to set the nation on a path to “defeat deforestation and global warming.”
Describing the “climate denialism” of outgoing president Jair Bolsonaro, Lula said the “survival of the Amazon Forest” was on the line during the recent election.
The Amazon is the world’s largest tropical forest. It helps regulate climate and especially rainfall across the Americas, making it a vital source of water for those in the region. But nearly 20% has disappeared since 1970 through logging and burning. The massive carbon sink has even started to emit more carbon than it stores due to clearing, in part to make way for cattle and soy crops.
During Lula’s last stint in power from 2003 to 2010, his left-wing government reduced Amazon deforestation by an estimated 67%. Much of that work was undone under Bolonaro’s reign, when Amazon deforestation soared to alarming rates.
Deforestation hit record highs in September and October of this year, with environmental group WWF stating that the “unbridled” destruction would likely continue until Lula’s government takes full power on 1 January 2023.
The logging and burning of the forest — the majority of which lies in Brazil — also fueled a near 10% rise in Brazil’s annual CO2 emissions in 2020.
At COP27, Lula reiterated his promise to end deforestation — and to protect the territorial rights of Indigenous people in the region whose land has been exploited by loggers, miners and squatters under Bolsonaro’s rule.
Confirming his plan to strengthen oversight in the Amazon, he said the 28 million people living in the rainforests can become the “protaginists of their own conservation” through the creation of a new Ministry of Indigenous People.
“We are going to make a big fight against illegal deforestation,” he said at the UN talks.
“We are going to take very good care of the Indigenous people,” added Lula. [more]
