by Jake Spring
BELÉM, Brazil (Reuters) – Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva on Wednesday expressed hope for a united front among forest nations in future global climate talks, a day after an agreement was reached at the summit. on the Amazon.
Delegates from eight Amazon countries are gathered in the northern Brazilian city of Belém for the summit, which is due to see them meet leaders from countries including Indonesia, Congo and the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) on Wednesday.
The Congo Basin and Southeast Asia are home to two of the largest rainforests in the world after the Amazon.
Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, who has long sought multilateral ties with less developed countries, repeated his calls for rich, industrialized nations to fund and help poor countries adapt to climate change.
It is this message that the Brazilian leader wants to deliver at the next United Nations climate summit, COP28, scheduled for November in Dubai.
“We want to prepare for the first time a joint document so that all the forest countries come together in the United Arab Emirates and we can have serious discussions with the rich countries,” Lula said last week.
FIGHT AGAINST ORGANIZED CRIME
The first day of the Belém Summit resulted in an agreement for regional cooperation in scientific research and the fight against organized crime.
But environmental activists have criticized the deal for failing to commit to ending deforestation by 2030 while falling short of expectations on oil drilling and illegal mining.
Last year, Brazil, the DRC and Indonesia managed to join forces to pressure rich countries to finance the conservation of tropical forests.
Some developed countries such as Norway and Germany, major contributors to the conservation of the Amazon in Brazil, will be represented at this two-day summit, such as France, technically a forest country due to its overseas region. sea, French Guiana, border with Brazil.
In a message posted Tuesday on social networks, Emmanuel Macron pleads for a “model” consisting in remunerating “the services rendered by forest states and their populations to the rest of the world”.
The French president notably defended this device during a trip to Papua New Guinea and during an international summit on saving forests in March in Gabon.
Emmanuel Macron is represented in Belém by the French ambassador to Brazil, Brigitte Collet.
( Zhifan Liu, with input from Elizabeth Pineau, editing by Kate Entringer)
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