President-elect Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva proclaims ‘Brazil is back’ at COP27

Brazil’s President-elect Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva vowed to slow deforestation and aggressively tackle climate change at COP27 in Egypt. File photo by Christophe Petit Tesson/EPA-EFE

“We must stop this plunge into the abyss. There is no climate security in the world without a protected Amazon,” he said. “We will achieve zero deforestation and biome degradation at all costs.”

Lula defeated far-right incumbent Jair Bolsonaro in Brazil’s election in October. He served as president from 2002 to 2011. He will be sworn in on January 1.

The Amazon rainforest plays a huge role in maintaining the global climate, sequestering carbon from the atmosphere, and supporting one of the most diverse ecosystems in the world. Deforestation threatens to turn much of the tropical rainforest into arid savannah.A report was published on natural climate change About 75 percent of tropical rainforests are at a “tipping point,” losing the ability to recover from drought and human-induced damage, it said in March.

report of the intergovernmental panel on climate change 1.6 million Since 1990, square miles of rainforest have been destroyed.

According to the BBC, Lula’s road to reform will not be smooth. He won the presidency by a narrow margin of less than 2%. During his first term as president, the rate of deforestation slowed to one-sixth.Deforestation is said to have increased by more than 25% under Bolsonaro’s tenure, which began in 2019 analyze From the UK climate watchdog Carbon Brief.

The president-elect vowed to protect the land of indigenous people as well. Indigenous people in Egypt cheered on Bolsonaro after he announced the removal of damage done to their land during his presidency.