“Brazil is back”: Lula’s speech at COP27

“Brazil is back. Brazil is coming out of that cocoon to which it has been subjected to for the last four years,” Lula stated. 

November 16, 2022 by Brasil de Fato
Lula with Indigenous leaders at COP27 - Ricardo Stuckert

On the first day of his public agenda in Egypt, currently hosting the COP27 conference, President-elect of Brazil Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva pushed for the climate conference to be held in the Amazon. “We are going to talk to the UN Secretary-General and ask that the 2025 COP be held in Brazil,” he declared, mentioning Amazonas and Pará as possible locations. 

“Brazil is back. Brazil is coming out of that cocoon to which it has been subjected to for the last four years,” Lula stated. 

After a day of meetings behind closed doors on November 15, Lula received, from the governors of the states of the Amazon basin, a letter with proposals for sustainable development.

The governor of the state of Pará, Helder Barbalho, read the document. “We express our willingness to build a fruitful and effective relationship with the federal government, based on democratic respect, compliance with the Constitution, and dialogue with the powers that be at the state and federal levels,” reads an excerpt from the text. 

After the reading, Lula endorsed the content of the letter. “It is more than fair that we recover the alliance between the federative units so that the federal government governs in agreement with the governors, and even more so that the federal government governs again in agreement with the mayors,” he said.

Lula took advantage of his speech to reinforce the proposal to create the Ministry of the Original Peoples, as a way to strengthen public policies for indigenous people and ensure the active participation of the peoples in the government. 

“We are going to wage a very strong fight against illegal deforestation. It is important for people to know that we are going to take very good care of Indigenous peoples. And we are going to create a Ministry of the Original Peoples to make sure that [Indigenous people] are not treated like bandits,” said Lula. 

This article was originally published on Brasil de Fato.