Speeches by Brazil's President Lula and Minister Marina Silva at event about forests
President Lula
I don't have a namelist, so I won't mention any names. I just want to congratulate the presidents who represent forest countries and UAE authorities who are holding this extraordinary COP — and to tell you that I am going to break protocol. Everything is very organized, everything is very bureaucratic. Everyone has three three minutes to speak, and taking care.
And I, although I am President of Brazil, will not talk about forests, because I think that this is an unprecedented meeting in the history of COPs. Many COPs were held—28—before forests could come and speak for themselves. And I couldn't talk about forests if there is a person from the forest in my government.
Marina was born in the forest and learnt how to write at age 16. I think it's fair that, to talk about the forest, instead of talking to the president, who is from a state that doesn't belong to it, we must listen to her—the one who is responsible for the success of the environmental preservation policy that we are advancing in Brazil.
Marina has a speech which she can read. But I think she should speak from her heart about the forest, because today's meeting is unprecedented. This is the first time that the forests have come to speak for themselves. This is the first time that we are saying: it's not enough to avoid deforestation, we need to take care of the forest; to take care of the people who live in the forest; and to take care of the forest's biodiversity. This costs a lot of money, and rich countries have to help foot the bill. That's what we want at this COP and that's why I'm going to stay here and listen to Marina speak.
Minister Marina Silva
Ladies and gentlemen, it is a great honor to be here in this forum addressing oceans, forests, and so many other initiatives. It's an even greater honor to hear from my president—from President Lula, this man with an incredible history who now has a great responsibility, in one of the countries with the world's largest tropical rainforests, to protect its forests, its native peoples, its biodiversity. Thank you very much for this honor, Mr President. And I must say that everything that is happening in Brazil is thanks to his commitment to democracy, to combating inequality, to protecting the environment and tackling climate change.
I feel very honored to be able to occupy this space provided by Your Excellency, my companion. We started working on this cause when I was 18 years old and now we have the opportunity to be at the forefront of this challenge for the third time. I wasn't sure if I was going to read your speech in front of you, but I'm going to talk very quickly about the efforts being made in Brazil.
President Lula, when he took office on January 1, 2023, signed ten presidential decrees. Of these ten decrees, five were about the environment. Of the five decrees about the environment, most were about the protection of forests and indigenous peoples.
We created a deforestation prevention and control plan based on three strategic axes. This plan was made for the first time during President Lula's first government—based on combating illegal practices that destroyed the forest, implementing territorial planning, with correct allocation of forested areas to Conservation Units, Indigenous Lands and sustainable use. A third axis [was] support for sustainable productive activities.
Now, in this third term, in which I am Minister for the third time, these three axes were added, based on Lula's directive to create economic instruments to encourage bioeconomy and sustainable development. With this effort by Your Excellency, in the first ten months of your government we have already managed to reduce deforestation by 49.5%—which was on a frightening upward trend—, thus avoiding the release of 250 million tons of CO₂ into the atmosphere. If it weren't for your measures, we would have seen a 54% increase in deforestation—and not a 49% drop under your government over these ten months.
Another thing that Your Excellency did for the benefit of forests was the resumption of policies to protect indigenous peoples, by creating the Ministry of Indigenous Peoples. A ministry that has the first woman as Minister of Indigenous Peoples, Soninha Guajajara, and that resumes actions to create Indigenous Lands. Another effort is the recognition of quilombola territories. Original peoples are responsible for 80% of the world's protected forests, and the quilombola people now also have a woman, a black woman, Anielle Franco, a young woman who is helping to protect the forest alongside the quilombola people.
Another important issue is that Brazil's environmental policy is not sectoral, President, and we owe this to you. The policy is transversal. Today you have 23 ministries working on the environmental agenda—19 ministries in an effort to combat deforestation with policies in various areas.
Finally, Your Excellency has made the Minister of Finance coordinator of the Ecological Transformation Plan. In other words, the guideline to protect the forest is more than command and control—it is a guideline for sustainable development in its four dimensions: the environmental dimension, the social dimension, the economic dimension and the cultural dimension. Sustainable development that protects forests is protecting biodiversity, protecting water, protecting culture, protecting a worldview, and above all protecting the balance of the planet.
We, the forest countries, on your initiative, will possess the mechanism that you are developing, with a first proposal to discuss with Congo, Indonesia, the Democratic Republic of Congo, the eight Amazon countries alongside us, towards the global financing of forests by sovereign wealth funds which will be able to apply part of these resources to protect forests. We also created the Amazon Fund, and we think it is an inspiration for other countries.
Protecting forests means protecting the balance of the planet and the oceans. Thank you very much for this honor. And I want to leave your speech in the annals of this meeting, which is certainly a historic speech, and which Your Excellency gave me the honor of delivering. It was only possible to achieve what we achieved because, in your first government, we managed to reduce deforestation by 83% for more than a decade. We avoided releasing 5 billion tons of CO₂ into the atmosphere, and were responsible for creating 80% of the protected areas that were created in the world from 2003 to 2008.
Commitment to the forest is not just from the government. It's about business, society and science. And we work with all these pillars—because protecting the forest is not just a government action, it is an action by all of humanity.
I thank you all very much for this opportunity.
