Lula promises COP27 that ‘Brazil is back’ in climate change fight

Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva has vowed to put Brazil at the centre of the fight against climate change, with the president-elect telling delegates at the UN COP27 summit in Egypt that he will crack down on illegal deforestation and create a special ministry to represent the interests of indigenous people.

Lula, who last month defeated incumbent leader Jair Bolsonaro in a tightly fought presidential election, also said he would ask the UN to host the COP30 summit in 2025 in the Amazon rainforest.

“It’s important for it to be in the Amazon. It’s important for the people who defend the Amazon to get to know what the region is,” said the incoming president, who will take office on January 1.

“We will fight hard against illegal deforestation. We will take care of indigenous people. I’m here to tell you that Brazil is back in the world,” he said, on his first international trip since being elected. “Brazil is emerging from the cocoon to which it has been subjected for the last four years.”

The 77-year-old leftwing leader received an enthusiastic welcome from supporters at the summit in Sharm el-Sheikh, who chanted his name as he entered the venue and cheered during his speech on Wednesday.

In a wide-ranging address, he also called for global efforts to combat inequality and poverty and the reform of the UN.

Under rightwing Bolsonaro, illegal deforestation surged in the Brazilian part of the Amazon, which accounts for 60 per cent of the total rainforest.

“This devastation [of the Amazon] will be a thing of the past. The crimes that happened during the current government will now be combated,” Lula said “We will rebuild our enforcement capabilities and monitoring systems that were dismantled during the past four years.”

In the first nine months of this year, more than 8,500 sq km of forest were razed, a 23 per cent increase on the same period last year, according to satellite data from the Brazilian national space research industry.

Bolsonaro regularly spoke about the importance of opening the rainforest to commercial activity — rhetoric that was taken by the region’s gold miners and loggers as clearance to cut down forest.

The approach, however, left Latin America’s largest nation isolated in international climate change negotiations, with Bolsonaro becoming conspicuously absent at the regular COP summits.

Deforestation is Brazil’s largest source of emissions and parts of the Amazon are now suspected by scientists to be emitting more carbon dioxide than they are absorbing.

Upon his election, Lula quickly signalled that he intended to change Brazil’s course, using his victory speech to pledge to halt illegal deforestation — a notoriously difficult proposition given the region’s vast size, lack of infrastructure and myriad criminal groups.

The president-elect took time at COP27 to meet governors representing Brazil’s Amazonian states and signed a letter indicating his willingness to work with them on the “climate transition”.

Lula also reminded delegates of multibillion-dollar pledges for support made to developing nations during previous summits, which had still not come to fruition.

“We can’t stay keep promising and not doing. One of the reasons for my return is to call in these promises,” said Lula in an impassioned speech.

Political leaders from Germany and Norway have indicated they are willing to restart multimillion-dollar Amazon Fund payments to Brazil to aid conservation efforts as soon as Lula takes office. These payments were halted in 2019 amid surging deforestation and changes to the management of the fund by the Bolsonaro administration.

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