The Amazon, more than six million square kilometers of tropical forest essential to regulate planetary temperature, is starting this Thursday and the technical negotiation on how to confront the climate emergency. The host, President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, has opened in Belém, in the Amazon, the summit of leaders prior to the UN climate summit, l, that of negotiators. The veteran leftist president has made a passionate defense of science and the urgency of combating climate change and the deniers “to avoid collapse.” “Extremist forces fabricate lies to defend a model that perpetuates environmental degradation,” he proclaimed before 53 heads of state and government who came to the Amazonian city.
But among them are not the leaders of four of the five most responsible for global warming. The United States, which has definitively occurred, has not even sent a representation to this Thursday’s meeting, while China, India and Russia participate at a lower level, that is, neither presidents nor prime ministers. The European Union is the only one of the quintet that has come with a robust representation, which includes Friedrich Merz (Germany), Emmanuel Macron (France) and Pedro Sánchez (Spain). They are joined by Keir Starmer (United Kingdom).
The United States boycott of the fight against warming marks the start of the Amazon summit. Two of the progressive presidents who have come to support Lula, Presidents Gabriel Boric, of Chile, and Gustavo Petro, of Colombia, have explicitly criticized him. “Without going any further, the president of the United States at the last UN General Assembly said that the climate crisis does not exist,” recalled the Chilean president. “And that is a lie,” he added forcefully, highlighting the risk that this attitude entails and demanding that politicians be guided by science.
After pointing out that “Mr. Trump is wrong”, the Colombian Petro has launched an alert: “Science predicts collapse if the United States does not move towards the decarbonization of its own economy. It is not drilling, drilling, drilling, the president of the United States is 100% wrong.”
Lula, a , has lamented that the thousand emergencies of the international situation divert attention and money from the vital battle to make the planet habitable. “The climate regime is not alien to the zero-sum logic that prevails in the international order. In a scenario of insecurity and mutual distrust, immediate selfish interests prevail over the long-term common good.” The international meeting in the Amazon was starting when the UN published a report confirming that registered.
For the Brazilian president, who will seek a fourth term in 2026, hosting the climate summit in the Amazon is the one on the international scene since he defeated Jair Bolsonaro in the 2022 elections. A path that, in the role he so enjoys, has also included hosting two summits of the G20 and the BRICS. The leftist has made an effort to return to his homeland the shine it had abroad and bury the times of Bolsonaro, when the South American country ended up becoming
Without directly criticizing Trump, British Prime Minister Keir Starmer has praised science as a guide to the battle against global warming. He has also regretted that the consensus reached ten years ago by the Paris Agreement, signed in December 2015 in the French capital, has been blown up. He recalled that, then, the discrepancies were limited to the speed with which action had to be taken, while now the climate issue sows polarization.
But Labor Starmer has warned of the serious risks that leaving it for later would entail. “Inaction will lead to more expensive food, greater migration flows and increased threats to national security.” For Starmer, investing in the energy transition will improve the lives of contemporary workers and secure the future of next generations. Prince William, also present, has warned that the planet “is approaching dangerously close to a critical turning point.”
The Brazilian president made an effort to personally invite dozens of world leaders to come to Belém, but he has not achieved a presence of the desired density, reflecting a moment of war tensions and tariff wars in which he faces the search for multilateral consensus. “We need roadmaps to fairly reverse deforestation, overcome dependence on fossil fuels and mobilize the necessary resources to achieve this,” the host emphasized.
Although Lula wanted to get his Chinese counterpart, Xi Jiping, present in Belém, Beijing has decided to send number three, the vice prime minister, Ding Xuexiang. He has reiterated that “developed countries must lead the reduction of emissions and financing” the transition. But he has also made reference to the tariff war waged by the American president against the rest of the world and has linked it to the transformation necessary to stop global warming. “We need to eliminate the trade barriers that are hindering the green transition,” he stated in obvious reference to Washington. Latin America, in general, and Brazil, in particular, is one of the great areas of the commercial battle and the strategic battle fought between the two superpowers.
Ding Xuexiang has also raised his chest and, for the first time, commits China to concrete cuts in its greenhouse gases.
The summit of the presidents is held days before the UN COP30 begins next Monday, the technical negotiations between delegations from almost all over the planet. For this reason, Lula has emphasized that the words of the leaders “will be the compass that will guide” the negotiators of each country until the 21st, the day of the closing.
Bringing forward the presidential summit is due to the need of , a city of 1.3 million inhabitants in the Amazon River basin, with a precarious network of infrastructure and services. With 60% of its neighbors living in favelas, no other state capital has so much population in substandard housing. And a good part is not connected to the sanitation network.
The posters in which the Government of the state of Pará boasts of works for the COP welcome visitors in the center and the outskirts of Belém, which suffers from infernal traffic. They have paved numerous streets, opened bike lanes, new roads – sometimes cutting down mature trees and replacing them with saplings – and they have launched air-conditioned buses. This Thursday at dawn, at about 24 degrees, many residents used the bike paths to exercise. During the middle hours of the day, the heat is so intense that much of the activity is semi-paralyzed. The same thing happens with torrential rains, as the European Von der Leyen confirmed upon her arrival.
Brazil is presented in Belém as a country that leads by example. Lula and his Minister of Environment and Climate Change, Marina Silva, boast of arriving with their homework done regarding deforestation – ha -, the main cause of Brazilian greenhouse gases, and with the ambitious goal of completely eliminating it by 2030.
Paradoxically, the climate negotiations are being held in the capital of a state that in recent years has led the rates of illegal logging. Pará, a state larger than France, is a region where thousands of square kilometers of vegetation have been cut down to make way for livestock. With political will and means, this Government has managed to stop Bolsonaro’s denialist speech.
Brazil’s star proposal for this event is an investment fund with which to raise money to compensate countries that conserve their tropical forests. With the Tropical Forest Forever Facility (FTTT), Lula’s Government is aiming for green capitalism. The leftist president believes that it is time to put an end to the era of donations – because they are usually a fraction of what is announced and take time to arrive – and move towards the era of investment. The FTT, which will be operated by the World Bank, was created with the objective of remunerating four dollars per conserved hectare to countries whose vegetation absorbs enormous amounts of greenhouse gases in a service to the rest of the planet.
Brazil emphasizes as an innovation that it is an instrument promoted jointly by countries with tropical forests and by rich countries. Furthermore, the design of the fund foresees that 20% of the money will go to indigenous people and other local communities, that is, to those who, with their sustainable lifestyles, preserve the jungle better than anyone else.
