Speech by President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva during the Summit for a New Global Financial Pact, in France

Well, firstly, I’d like to greet President Emmanuel Macron, president of the French Republic, on whose behalf I greet the Heads of State and Government who are taking part in this high-level dialogue.

I want to greet my friend, former president of Brazil and currently president of the New BRICS Development Bank, through whom I greet all representatives of development banks and other financial institutions who are present.

Therefore, my friend Dilma Rousseff, it’s a great pleasure to have you here.

I wanted to tell you, my dear Macron, that I changed my speech last night.

I spent the week in Italy preparing a speech, but I’ve already changed it ten times – and I’m not going to read it.

I want to begin with an important announcement.

In 2025 we’re going to hold COP30 in an Amazon country.

I hope that all the people who value the Amazon so much, who admire the Amazon so much, who say that the Amazon is “the lungs of the Earth,” I hope that they may all take part in COP25, in the state of Pará, so that they have an idea of what the Amazon really is. A lot of people talk about it, but not many people know it.

And it’s important that people talk about it knowingly.

In Brazil, the Amazon represents nothing more, nothing less than 5 million square kilometers – and, in addition to these 5 million square kilometers of the Amazon in Brazil, there is the Ecuadorian Amazon, the Colombian Amazon, the Peruvian Amazon, the Bolivian Amazon, the Venezuelan Amazon, the Guyana Amazon, the Suriname Amazon and the French Amazon, belonging to French Guiana.

On August 12, we’re going to hold a big meeting in the state of Pará with all the presidents of South America that make up the entire Amazon region, so that we can write up a proposal to take to COP28 in the United Arab Emirates.

We’re certainly going to want to talk to Congo; we’re certainly going to talk to Indonesia, because we want to share a single proposal by the countries that still harbor great standing forests.

We want to make them an asset not only for environmental preservation, but an economic asset, to help the people who live within the forest. There are 400 indigenous peoples in this Brazilian rainforest. And these 400 indigenous peoples have 300 different languages. But we face a great number of challenges in this same region. We’re facing mining, and organized crime. And we often face people who, in bad faith, want to try to plant soy and corn, and raise cattle, inside this rainforest – when in fact this is not necessary at all.

Responsible businesspersons know that this is wrong, and they know that this’ll cause a very serious problem when selling their products to other countries. This is the first thing I wanted to say to you.

Brazil is possibly the country that has one of the cleanest energy matrices in the world. In the field of electric energy, 87% of Brazilian energy is renewable, against 27% in the rest of the world. When it comes to the entire mix of its energy, 50% of Brazilian energy is renewable, while the rest of the world has only 15% of renewable energy. This means that we’re on track to fulfill our famous campaign proposal – to reach zero deforestation by 2030.

And it’s not just the Amazon that we have to take care of. There’s the Cerrado biome, the Caatinga biome, the Pantanal biome, the Atlantic Forest biome. There are five major biomes that we have to take care of, because they’re all victims of attacks every year. Sometimes by fire, sometimes by too much rain and sometimes by predatory people who want to plant things that shouldn’t be planted there.

I didn't come here to talk only about the Amazon. I came here to say that, along with the climate issue, we have to address the issue of world inequality. It’s unacceptable that – in a meeting between presidents of important countries – the word inequality does not appear. Wage inequality, race inequality, gender inequality, education inequality, health inequality.

That is, we’re an increasingly unequal world, and wealth is increasingly concentrated in the hands of fewer people, and poverty concentrated in the hands of more people. If we don’t discuss inequality, and if we don’t make it a priority like we have with the climate issue, we may well attain a very good climate, and people would still be dying of hunger in many countries around the world.

And it’s not just in Africa, it’s in Latin America, it’s in Brazil. When I was president of Brazil from 2003 to 2010, and President Dilma, from 2010 to 2016, the UN recognized that Brazil had left the Hunger Map. At that time, we had helped 36 million people to escape absolute poverty, and 40 million people to reach middle-class purchasing power.

Thirteen years later, I’m back at the Presidency of Brazil – and again, 33 million people are starving. When we left the Presidency, Brazil was the sixth largest economy in the world. Today, Brazil is the twelfth largest economy in the world. That is, the country has moved backwards, just as many other countries have moved backwards. It depends on the government that is elected, it depends on the government being concerned with social issues.

And we need to be clear about the following: what was created after the Second World War, the Bretton Woods institutions no longer work, and no longer serve society’s aspirations or interests. Let’s be clear that the World Bank leaves much to be desired in terms of what the world wants from the World Bank. Let’s be clear that the IMF leaves a lot to be desired in what people expect from the IMF.

Banks often lend money, and the borrowed money results in state bankruptcy. This is what we’re seeing in Argentina today. Argentina, in the most irresponsible way in the world, the IMF lent 44 billion dollars to a gentleman who was president, it is not known what he did with the money, and Argentina today is facing a very difficult economic situation, because it has no dollars even to pay the IMF.

So, it’s important that we’re aware that we cannot continue to have institutions functioning in an erroneous way. Even the UN National Security Council. The permanent members no longer represent the political reality of 2023. Although they did represent them in 1945, in 2023 it is necessary to make a change. The UN must regain representation. To have political strength. The UN was able to create the State of Israel in 1948 and is not able to solve the problem of the occupation of the Palestinian State.

So, if we don't change these institutions, the climate issue becomes a joke. And why is it a joke? Who will carry out the decisions made in the forums that we hold? Is it the National State? Let's be frank: who complied with the Kyoto Protocol? Who complied with COP15 decisions made in Copenhagen? Who complied with the Paris Agreement? In other words: these decisions are not complied with because there’s no global governance with the strength to decide things and make us comply.

If each one of us leaves a COP and goes home to approve things within our National States, we won’t approve them. So it is necessary to be clear that, if we don’t change the institutions, the world will remain the same. Rich people will stay rich, poor people will stay poor. This is how it is. And I say this with regret.

Because I have a very rich experience of how easy it is for us to govern for the poor. I always said that the poor were never a problem. The poor will always be a solution when you put the poor within the country’s budget. But if you forget the poor, and you put everyone else in the budget, there will never be money left over to take care of the most miserable people, because they don’t have unions, they don’t have political parties, they don’t march on the streets, they don’t have organized movements, and they live far away from the seat of government – they often live on the outskirts. So these people will always be abandoned. And inequality is increasing.

It's been at least 20 years since I heard FAO say that 900 million human beings go to bed hungry every day. How are we going to solve this if we don’t discuss it? How are we going to solve the problem of inequality if we don’t discuss inequality?

I’m one of those people, Macron, who learned that the world’s political class often only values the poor in election times. At election time, the poor are a country’s most important asset. After the elections, the poor are forgotten and life goes on.

So it’s important, and I want to congratulate you for this meeting. I, for example, got to know about a plan by the African Union called FIDA. It provided for 360 billion dollars in investments in infrastructure across the African continent. If the developed world decided to fund companies to build the infrastructure needs in that plan, Africa would’ve already taken a leap in quality as to infrastructure.

Yesterday we heard the president of Congo speak about the Congo River. As far as I know, the Congo River could harbor at least three Itaipus, our biggest hydroelectric plant, but it doesn’t have any, because it doesn’t have any money and it doesn’t have any funding.

And we need to stop, at the international level, proselytizing with resources. ‘Oh, I’m going to help this little thing here, I’m going to help this little thing over there,’ when in fact we need to take a leap in quality, and invest in structural things that change the lives of countries. This is why I’m optimistic about the creation of the BRICS Bank. This is why I’m optimistic about the possibility of creating the Bank of the South. This is why I’m optimistic that we’ll discuss trading currency. Why did the World Trade Organization end?

Let's see if everyone here remembers how the World Trade Organization ended: there was an election in the US in 2009, and that’s why President Bush withdrew from the WTO – and the agreement that was about to be made never was. And the US never went back to the WTO. I figured Obama would come back as soon as he took office. He didn’t go back and the WTO now does very little.

This is why protectionism is back. Who doesn’t remember the G20 discussion in London, when we discussed how to avoid protectionism, when we discussed that rich countries would have to invest in developing countries and in poor countries? What happened? The rich countries went back to protectionism, and we’re seeing poverty grow on every continent.

I’ll give you an example from my country: I was very proud to have left the Hunger Map with President Dilma in 2012. And I’m very sad that now, when I’m back at the Presidency, my country was worse – from the point of view of democracy – because there’d been a fascist ruling it. It was worse from the point of view of education because no money was invested in universities. It was worse from the point of view of society because there were no social policies. It was worse from the point of view of the economy.

And we now have to do everything we’d already done before. Everything. Everything we did between 2003 and 2016; we’ll have to redo everything for the country to grow once again. The one thing I want to say to you at this meeting is that the climate issue is not a secondary one – and this is why Brazil is going to control deforestation.

For this reason, we’re going to make it a point of honor to put an end to deforestation in the Amazon by 2030. Brazil has 30 million hectares of degraded lands; no-one needs to cut down a single tree to plant soybean or corn, or to raise cattle. Simply recover the degraded lands.

And then we need to deal with international agreements, trade agreements. Trade agreements must be fairer. I’m dying to make a deal with the European Union. But it’s not possible. The additional letter that was drawn up by the European Union does not allow an agreement to be made. We’re going to send an answer, but we need to start discussing this. It is unacceptable that, in a strategic partnership, there is an additional letter posing a threat to a strategic partner. How are we going to solve this?

If I could, I’d take the German Chancellor and make him Minister of Mines and Energy in my country, so that he could transform all our ores into products to export finished products, and not just ore. That was the best thing I heard here, yesterday at dinner and today at this meeting. Because it’s true. It’s true. We are raw material exporters and we don’t keep the results of what we produce.
In many places around the world, companies that remove ores do not even reforest what they deforested. They leave the hole and walk away. So I want to tell you that I’m back, after 13 years, to the Brazilian Presidency. Everyone knows that I’m 77 years old – but my willingness to do things is like I’m 30. And I will deliver, my dear Olaf Scholz, I will deliver in 2030, I will invite you to go to the Amazon, you know, with zero deforestation. And again we will end hunger.

Dilma knows what we did to end hunger. She is now president of the BRICS Bank. She can now prepare to sign a few loans for Brazil and other poorer countries – because we’re going to make a difference.

Some people get scared when I say that we need to create new currencies for trade. I don’t know why Brazil and Argentina have to trade in dollars. Why can’t we do this in our own currencies? I don’t know why Brazil and China can’t do this in our own currencies. Why do I have to buy dollars? So this is a discussion that is on my agenda and, if it’s up to me, it’ll happen at the BRICS meeting in September. And it will also happen at the G20 meeting, because we’ll need to get more African colleagues to participate in it, as you are doing at the G7.

That is, these forums cannot be a luxury group. The political elite. No. We have to summon the unequal, the different, so that we can address the plurality of problems the world has. All of us, all of us, have as a parameter what happened in the European Union. You know, Macron, that I think the construction of the European Union was a democratic heritage for humanity.

After two world wars, you managed to build the European Union, managed to create a parliament, managed to live with divergence, but discussing things democratically is something that I want for South America. It’s something I think we need. The African Union is much more organized than we are in Latin America. Much more organized. And we want to create new blocs to negotiate with the European Union.

And I’m sorry, World Bank and IMF, but we must review how they work. It is necessary to have more money, to have new leadership, and more people participating in leadership, because it cannot just be the same as in 1945, 1946, 1947 and 1948.

So, dear Macron, thank you for this meeting, and get ready because I’m even more willing to fight during these next three years that I’m going to preside over Brazil.

Thank you, and good luck.