Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva inaugurated the COP30 climate summit in Belém, emphasizing the symbolic importance of hosting the conference in the heart of the Amazon. He urged global leaders to prioritize climate action over war, highlighting that investing $1.3 trillion to address the climate crisis is more cost-effective than military spending. Lula outlined a three-part "Call to Action": fulfilling ambitious emissions reduction commitments, increasing climate financing for developing nations, and placing people—especially vulnerable and Indigenous communities—at the center of climate policy. He also warned that without accelerated efforts, the world risks surpassing the 1.5°C warming threshold, deepening global inequality and ecological devastation.
00:00Welcome to From the South. Let's go very quickly to Brazil for the COP30 Climate Summit. President Lula Silva is offering statements. Let's listen.
00:08Making this achievement to help the COP meeting, the heart of the rainforest in the state of Pará and in the city of Belém.
00:17Please try to benefit from this city of its joy, of the beauty, and also benefit from the joyful charm, warmth of men and women that will receive you here, that will host you here.
00:39And above all, take benefit of the cuisine of Pará. Here you're going to eat the food that you never ate anywhere else in the world.
00:52Maybe the best fish. And do not forget to eat manisoba. The interpreter could interpret it correctly because it's manisoba, as you pronounce it.
01:05And there's a dispute between Bahia and the state of Pará which manisoba is the best one.
01:12And I also would like to say to all of you that to organize COP here, it's so difficult to end with the pollution on the planet.
01:24It would be much easier to help the COP in a finished city, a city that would have no problem.
01:31But we decided to accept the challenge to organize the COP in the state of the Amazon region to prove that when you have political will or when you have the will and you have commitment with the truth,
01:51then we can prove that there's nothing possible for men or for women.
01:58What is impossible is not to have the courage, the bold, to face the problem.
02:04So congratulations to all the delegates here, men and women, government representatives, and to the people of Pará.
02:11Congratulations for all of us. This is a lesson of civility. This is a lesson of human greatness.
02:23The men who go to war, if you are present here at the COP, they would perceive that it's much cheaper to put $1,300,000,000,000,000 for us to end with the climate crisis
02:39than to put $2,000,000,000,000,000 and $700,000,000,000,000 to buy weapons and go to war.
02:46war. For more than 30 years at the Earth Summit meeting in 1992, the leaders of the world
03:02gathered in the city of Rio de Janeiro to discuss development and environmental protection.
03:09In that moment, multilateralism was experiencing its apex. The world was going to the so-called
03:18conference decades where emerged many great compass that guided humanity during these three
03:24decades. Between them came up the concept of sustainable development and the principle
03:32of common but shared responsibilities. Common but differentiated responsibilities. That
03:41is a legacy of the Rio 92. Today the climate convention is back to its home country. It
03:46makes the way back to reclaim the enthusiasm that have driven its birth. In the next two
03:55weeks, Belém will become the capital of the world. Negotiators, governors, mayors, members
04:03of the parliament, scientists, civil society organizations will be part of this great collective
04:09endeavor in favor of the planet. To bring hope to the heart of the Amazon was a very difficult
04:17task but a necessary one. The Amazon is not an abstract entity. Those that only see four
04:25forests from above have no knowledge of what goes beneath the trees and its shadow. The biome
04:34that is most diverse in the earth is the home of almost 50 million people including 400 indigenous
04:43people that are dispersed in nine developing countries that still face immense economic and
04:49social challenges. A challenge that Brazil fights to overcome with the same determination that
04:55could have managed to bypass the logistics adversities that are inherent to organize a conference
05:00such as this size. When you leave the city of Belém, the people of the city will continue
05:08with the investments and infrastructures that were made here to receive you all. And the world
05:15would then say that it now knows the reality of the Amazon tropical forests. In the days that came before this conference, heads of state and of government, ministers of state, representatives of international organizations and of civil society gathered during the
05:22Berlin summit meeting for climate. We launched a tropical forest forever fund. It's an innovative
05:40during the Berlin Summit Meeting for Climate.
05:44We launched a Tropical Forest Forever Fund.
05:49It's an innovative facility that in just one day
05:54was invested $5.5 billion in investments.
05:59We adopted collective commitments.
06:01First, integrated handling of fire.
06:04Second, the right to land ownership of the indigenous people
06:08and traditional peoples to quadruple the production of sustainable fuel,
06:14the creation of a coalition on carbon markets,
06:18and the alignment of climate action to fight hunger and absolute poverty.
06:23And more, the fight against environmental racism.
06:28The Berlin Summit was the arrival point of a long road
06:33that Brazil invited the international community
06:35to follow this long and wide road during the presidencies of the G20 and the BRICS.
06:42The synthesis of the elements that we gathered during this trajectory
06:46is contained in the so-called call to action that we launched during the summit meeting,
06:52and that was a contribution to the debates for this COPE and beyond the COPE.
06:57Climate change is not a threat of the future.
07:02It is already a tragedy of the present time.
07:06The Melissa hurricane that hit hard the Caribbean region
07:10and the tornado that reached the state of Paraná in the south of Brazil
07:14have left fatal victims in a trail of destruction.
07:19Droughts, fires in Africa and Europe, the floods in South America and in Southeast Asia,
07:26the increase of the global temperature is spreading pain and devastation,
07:31especially amongst the most vulnerable populations.
07:34COPE 30 will be the COPE of truth.
07:38In the era of fake news and misinformation, the obscurantists reject not only the evidence by science,
07:48but also the multilateralism progress.
07:52They control algorithms, solve hatred and spread fear.
07:57They attack institutions, they attack science and universities.
08:01Now it's the moment to impose a new defeat to the denialists.
08:13Without the Paris Agreement, the world would suffer with a catastrophic warming up
08:20of almost five degrees to the end of this century.
08:23So we're moving to the right direction, but at the wrong speed.
08:28At this pace, we would advance to a threshold that is higher than the one-and-a-half global temperature,
08:38if we keep this pace.
08:40And this, to break away from this barrier, is a risk that we cannot take.
08:44Dear friends, our call to action is split in three parts.
08:49And on the first part, I make an appeal to those countries should abide to their commitments.
08:56And this means to formulate and implement the NDCs, the National Determined Contributions, that would be ambitious.
09:05Then second, to assure financing, technology transfer, and capacity building for the developing countries.
09:13And to give the due attention to adaptations to the effects of the climate change.
09:19On the second part, I call the world leaders to accelerate their climate action.
09:26We have presented the roadmap for humanity, so that in a planned and fair way, we can overcome the reliance on fossil fuel.
09:37And we can stop at that and reverse the deforestation and mobilize resources for this end.
09:44Advance demands a more robust global governance to assure that words can be translated in deeds.
09:52The proposal of creation of a climate council linked to the General Assembly of the UN is a way to face this challenge and give it the political statute that it deserves.
10:04In the third part, I call the international community to place people in the core of the climate agenda.
10:14Global warming could push millions of people to hunger and poverty and that we can have setbacks of decades of advancement.
10:24The unproportional impact of climate change on women, Afro descent, migrants, and marginalized groups that should be taken into account in the adaptation policies.
10:37It is fundamental to recognize the indigenous people, territories, and traditional communities in the efforts for mitigation.
10:47In Brazil, 13% of the territory are demarcated land for people's indigenous.
10:55Maybe it's not much. We should have a fair transition.
10:59It needs to contribute to reduce the asymmetries between the global south and global north for during centuries of emissions.
11:08Climate emergency is a crease of inequality and exposes and exacerbates what is unacceptable.
11:25It deepens the perverse logic of those that want to live with dignity and those that can live with dignity and those that should die.
11:35To change this choice is to give a chance to the future that cannot be dictated by tragedy.
11:41The lack of hope could extinguish the hopes of the youth.
11:45We owe to our sons and daughters and grandsons the opportunity to live in an earth that is possible to keep a dream.
11:53The Yanomami shaman David Kopinawa said that the thought of the city is obscured and smoked, obstructed by the noise of the cars and of the machineries.
12:07So I hope that the serenity of the forest will inspire all of us to clarify our necessary thoughts to see what needs to be done.
12:22A good call, 34-0. Thank you very much.
12:26A good call, 34-0. Thank you very much.
12:43Well, we're listening to the opening statements of the...
12:46Well, we're listening to the opening statements of the...
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