Brazilian radical leftist President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva said on Monday that he hopes to see more American investments in Brazil’s green energy projects one week after failing to invite President Joe Biden to an environmental summit despite Biden pledging $500 million to Lula’s Amazon fund.
Lula said that he expected U.S. “green” investments to help both countries “drive the energy transition forward.”
Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva on July 21, 2023. (SERGIO LIMA/AFP via Getty Images)
The Brazilian president made his remarks during the latest issue of Conversa con o Presidente (“Talk with the President”), a weekly show broadcast through the state-owned Canal Gov television channel and on both Lula’s and the Brazilian government’s social media accounts.
“[Brazilian Finance Minister Fernando] Haddad showed us that it is possible, through a very strong energy and climate transition, to bring money from abroad for investment here in Brazil,” Lula said. “I hope that the United States is also embedded in this idea.”
Last week, Lula launched the “Growth Acceleration Plan” (PAC), an ambitious program that seeks to attain upwards of 1.7 trillion Brazilian reais ($347.5 billion) over the next four years in Infrastructure works to “fulfill the role of putting the State’s capacity at the service of the Brazilian population’s dreams of a better life.” The program also includes provisions towards Brazil’s “green” energy transition.
Lula served as president for two terms between 2003 and 2011. In 2017, he was sentenced to prison on charges of corruption, found guilty of taking bribes in major infrastructure program schemes and using the money to buy a luxury beachfront property. The nation’s top court, the Supreme Federal Tribunal (STF), overturned the conviction and allowed him to run for office in 2021 on a technicality; the STF has never challenged the evidence suggesting Lula was guilty of the crimes in question.
Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva (L) raises the hand of the mayoral candidate of the Workers Party (PT) Fernando Haddad during a campaign rally in Sao Paulo, Brazil, on September 27, 2012. (YASUYOSHI CHIBA/AFP/Getty Images)
The PAC program allows foreign financing of works that encourage the expansion of clean energy use in the South American country. During his weekly show, Lula explained that financial resources under the program directed towards the energy transition are considered “investments” and not “expenses,” adding that many countries are allegedly willing to invest in Brazil’s energy sector.
“This is the will of many people, both in European countries, in Saudi Arabia, and in the United Arab Emirates,” Lula said.
In April, President Joe Biden pledged $500 million over the next five years to Brazil’s Amazon Fund, a program established by Lula in 2008 to “raise donations for non-reimbursable investments in efforts to prevent, monitor and combat deforestation, as well as to promote the preservation and sustainable use in the Brazilian Amazon.”
Cattle graze on land recently burned and deforested by cattle farmers near Novo Progresso, Para state, Brazil, on Aug. 23, 2020. After four years of rising destruction in Brazil’s Amazon, deforestation dropped by 33.6% during the first six months of President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva’s term, according to government satellite data released Thursday, July 6, 2023. (AP Photo/Andre Penner)
Although Biden pledged to provide the Amazon Fund with U.S. resources, Brazil did not invite Biden to participate in the Amazon Cooperation Treaty Organization (ACTO) summit last week. Unlike the United States, Norway and Germany, countries that have donated to the fund, were invited.
Lula asserted during his show that rich countries “owe it to humanity” to fund the preservation of the world’s forests because of “centuries of driving industrial production that has fueled pollution and the cutting down of trees.”
Following the Lula-hosted ACTO summit, the participating nations signed the “Declaration of Belém,’” which environmentalists lamented did not contain unified deforestation goals, choosing instead to “urge” developed countries to provide and mobilize resources, including “the goal of mobilizing US$100 billion annually in climate finance.”
“We don’t want ‘help’, we want effective payment,” Lula said. “It’s as if they were paying something they owe to humanity, people preserving the current forests.”
“It’s very simple to understand. The rich countries had their introduction in the Industrial Revolution well before Brazil,” Lula continued. “So, they are responsible for the planet’s pollution, they managed to cut down all their forests before us. Now, what they have to do is contribute financially so that other countries can develop.”
Lula asserted during his show on Monday that Amazon countries should present a common position at the COP28 climate summit, scheduled to be hosted by the United Arab Emirates in November.
“That meeting [ACTO summit] had the pretext of preparing the countries that are in the Amazon for us to present a proposal on forests at COP28,” Lula said. “We managed to prepare a proposal and achieve a unitary thing.”
“We are in a position to arrive in the United Arab Emirates and say [to the “rich countries”] ‘We want this contribution from you and this is not a favor, this is the payment of a debt you owe to planet Earth,’” he continued.
Christian K. Caruzo is a Venezuelan writer and documents life under socialism. You can follow him on Twitter here.