Prince Charles, heir to the British crown, received the Governors for Climate coalition on Thursday (4) during COP26, a climate conference that takes place in Glasgow. The group, which brings together managers from 24 Brazilian states, participated in a meeting to discuss investments in climate action.
“The money is there, but we need governments to give the right signals to the market,” he said at the meeting.
The British proposal is to bring to Brazil a mobilization of private investments for sustainable projects, the so-called Sustainable Markets Initiative (SMI).
“I’ve been looking for green bond paths, but 15 years ago investors wouldn’t take the risk. Today, it’s an opportunity,” said the Prince of Wales.
Among the areas he considers to be priorities, he cited infrastructure, solutions based on nature and also the controversial geotechnology of underground carbon capture and storage — involved in one of the projects that the prince is expected to visit on Friday (5).
Governors Renato Casagrande (PSB-ES), Eduardo Leite (PSDB-RS) and Mauro Mendes (DEM-MT) were present at the meeting, as well as state government representatives from Pará, São Paulo and Minas Gerais and the mayor of Recife, João Campos (PSB).
After the prince’s brief speech, the Brazilians brought examples of local initiatives, the climate objectives of the states and projects seeking investment.
The prince’s advisors pointed out that investors in general are looking for large projects and that small ones could be brought together by several states, forming a large application.
“Brazil has the capacity to produce attractive small and large-scale sustainable infrastructure projects, such as water and sanitation, transport, public lighting,” said the president of the Minas Gerais Development Bank and the Brazilian Development Association, Sérgio Suchodolski , who also spoke at the meeting.
Although the room was prepared with headphones for translation from English into Portuguese, the devices did not work and, suddenly, one of the advisors of the Governors for Climate initiative, Flávia Bellaguarda, split up to translate simultaneously in the ear of the prince of Gales and also that of Governor Casagrande (Espírito Santo), with intervals that generated grace and added to the casual tone of the conversation.
Despite the ban on photography, communicated by the British organizers of the meeting, at the end of the meeting the Brazilians took out their cell phones and shot “selfies” with the prince, who accepted the photos with good humor.
The breaches of protocol were calmly absorbed by the event’s organizers, who were surprised by the extent of the conversation. The prince’s presence at the meeting was expected to last only 30 minutes, but he extended the conversation for an hour and a half, listening and responding to the speeches of the governors and secretaries with whom he shared the table.
The prince ended the meeting applauding the adhesion of ten states to the Race to Zero campaign, which brings together actors committed to the elimination of greenhouse gas emissions.
“I hope you will become extra secret weapons,” he concluded, in a joking tone, after using the term to refer to one of his advisers in the forestry area.
The journalist traveled at the invitation of Instituto Clima e Sociedade.
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