The Brazilian President, at a climate change summit held in Belém, Brazil, appealed to industrialised nations, claiming that they “must pay their share so that we can restore part of what was destroyed”.
Ten countries that have preserved their tropical forests for thousands of years – ecosystems that are vital to the planet – want industrialised nations to stop making empty promises and to open their wallets to help halt the climate emergency.
This message to the world's wealthiest nations was delivered at the Amazon Cooperation Treaty Organization climate summit hosted by Brazil, where its president, da Silva (Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva), took the opportunity to level harsh criticism at the European Union. Concluding the meeting, he declared: “Protectionist measures, which are very poorly disguised as environmental concern, are not the way forward.” The message was clear enough, even if Lula did not directly mention the EU, the EU-27 trade agreement with Mercosur, or the recently adopted European deforestation law.
Lula insisted and demanded that wealthy nations pay those who look after forests, further arguing from a position of historical responsibility: “It is not Brazil that needs money. It is not Colombia that needs money. It is not Venezuela. It is nature,” the Brazilian President said, adding that industrialised nations must now “pay their share so that we can restore part of what was destroyed. Nature needs money.”
New European environmental requirements, which Mercosur rejects, have become the main obstacle to the ratification of the agreement, which both blocs reached in 2019 after nearly twenty years of negotiations. Brussels' demands and the law that, since May, has vetoed imports into the EU of soya beans, coffee, cocoa or meat from illegally cleared or degraded territories have offended certain groups in Brazil and other Mercosur countries, who view it as an insult and part of what Lula calls “green neocolonialism”.
France was also singled out. Emmanuel Macron (Emmanuel Macron) was invited to the Belém summit as the president of French Guiana – an overseas territory that contains a small part of the Amazon rainforest – but he did not confirm his attendance. The French President posted a tweet congratulating Lula on organising the summit, stressing that “forests are absolutely essential in the fight against global warming and biodiversity loss”, while also noting that “France is the driving force behind the European Union's historic decision to no longer encourage imported deforestation” – the very regulation that has so angered Brazil.
https://english.elpais.com/international/2023-08-10/lula-accuses-the-eu-of-disguising-protectionist-measures-as-environmental-concern.html