Lula wants a global deal to phase down fossil fuels
This is a signal that the writing is on the wall for the fossil fuel extractive machine.
By Marcio Astrini
President Lula is a man who chooses his words carefully. This is a man who has been a politician virtually all his life who lives and breathes the fight, the risks, the drama and the opportunity of being a leader. This is a man who, in his 80s, is focused on winning an election next year. One that could be every bit as tense as the last time when he faced down President Bolsonaro. He is looking to COP30 in Belém to provide him with a story inside Brazil of his leadership, and to burnish his credentials outside Brazil. So when he talks, we should listen.
Lula has been very clear. He wants this meeting in Belém to deliver pathways off fossil fuels, a plan to end deforestation, and a plan to resolve the long running crisis on climate finance. Fossils, forests, finance: three core areas of climate change, delivered under a framework based on justice and poverty alleviation. Delivering these roadmaps out of Belém is part of a vision he has sketched out three times - from the leader summit to the opening day of COP30. You may call it a roadmap, a pathway, or a schedule as the Brazilian NDC does.
This is a signal that the writing is on the wall for the fossil fuel extractive machine. But, there is always a but. The President Lula who delivered speeches for ending fossil-fuels is the same that is authorising exploration of oil and gas in the Amazon. Some can call it a contradiction, as in fact it is, but just taking it as a contradictory act would be too foolish or shallow to describe. Having both, the clear message is that Lula may move together with others, but do not expect him to move alone.
COP30 then presents us with an opportunity that we did not necessarily envisage. We now have a chance to sketch out a long-term plan to make this country and planet safer and cleaner. A plan that will outlive the series of dictators wedded to fossil fuels who appear to be proliferating just at a time when we need to be moving in the opposite direction. Truly this could be a meeting where we’re looking far beyond election cycles, and far beyond one or two US presidents.
Governments in Belém have a choice - an historic one. They can either choose to hear Lula and back him, or keep their heads in the sand and not. This is quite clearly an inflection point. What I hope they do is come together in the spirit of mutirão and defiance, and support a path to craft a road from Belém where fossils and deforestation are eradicated.
Achieving this would be a big win. It would be an opportunity to show Lula’s credentials at the highest level. But for the world, the prize is much, much greater and that is the framing that our leaders here in Brazil should be looking at.
Marcio Astrini is Executive Secretary of Observatório do Clima, a climate network with more than 160 member NGOs in Brazil.