The president-elect, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, said today (17th) that he respects agribusiness and that true entrepreneurs in the sector are committed to the environment. Lula participated in a meeting with representatives of Brazilian civil society at the 27th United Nations Conference of the Parties on Climate Change (COP27), in Egypt.
“They say, ‘agribusiness doesn’t like Lula’. I don’t want you to like it, I just want you to respect me like I respect them. The true agribusiness entrepreneur knows where he cannot burn, where he cannot cut down the forest. The true agribusiness entrepreneur is committed because he knows that there is a price to be paid if we are irresponsible”, said the president-elect.
Lula reaffirmed that he will fight intensely against environmental crimes, such as mining on indigenous lands and illegal deforestation, and which will work with productivity incentive policies. “If he wants [o madeireiro] use wood, do your afforestation, buy an area of land and raise the trees you want to cut. Why cut down a tree that is 200 years old, it is not necessary, ”he said.
“You don’t need to cut down a square meter of tree to increase the production of soy, corn or raise cattle, we have millions of hectares of degraded land that can be recovered”, he argued.
For Lula, the State has to be present in society’s daily life. For this, according to him, national conferences with different sectors of society will be resumed.
“We reached the point of politicizing all judicial decisions, of judicializing all political decisions, of creating a secret budget in which Parliament starts to execute the budget that should be made by the Executive”, he said.
“I don’t see Brazil succeeding if society is not involved in the decisions we have to make. That’s why we are going to resume national conferences. During my period in government we held 74 national conferences. We are going to make it so that the people decide what public policy is that he understands to be correct for us to put into practice”, he added.
spending ceiling
For the president-elect, it is no use just thinking about fiscal responsibility without social responsibility. “If we don’t resolve social issues, this country is not worth governing,” he said. “If you say that, will the stock market fall, will the dollar rise? Patience, because the dollar does not increase and the stock market does not fall because of serious people, but because of speculators who live speculating every single day”, he added.
“What is the spending cap in a country? If the ceiling were to argue that we are not going to pay the amount of interest to the financial system that we pay every year, but continue to keep social policies intact, fine. But no, all that happens is taking money away from health, education, science and technology, culture. That is, it tries to dismantle everything that is part of the social and you don’t touch a cent of the financial system, you don’t touch a cent of the interest that bankers have to receive”, he argued.
According to Lula, in addition to meeting inflation targets, the country needs to have growth and job generation targets. “We have to guarantee that we are going to raise the minimum wage above inflation,” he said.
Change in the UN
In his speech, Lula defended global governance to comply with climate-related decisions and commitments. “The UN forums cannot continue to be forums for endless theoretical discussions and decisions that are often never taken seriously or are never complied with. Decisions need to be enforced if you have a kind of global governance that can decide what to do. If it depends on the internal discussions [de cada país]in the National Congress, many things approved about the climate will not be put into practice”, he said.
According to him, it is still necessary to guarantee the financing for countries that have natural reserves to be rewarded. “Often the money that is promised to developing countries doesn’t come out either. These US$ 100 billion were pledged in 2009 in Copenhagen [COP15] and it seems that people forget”, he said.
Lula also defended the reform of the UN Security Council, with the inclusion of more countries, such as African and Latin American countries, and a change in the right of veto.
“I have a historic fight to change world governance. The UN needs to change, it cannot just stay with the countries that won the Second World War. Including that the right of veto be overthrown, because it is not possible for a country to be able to veto decisions taken by all other countries. If we don’t have a strong UN, we’re not going to take this climate issue the way we think it has to be taken,” she said.
Even today, Lula has meetings with indigenous groups and with the secretary general of the United Nations, António Guterres. In conversation, the President-elect will propose that COP30, in 2025, be held in the Amazon??
listen on National Radio Agency??
