Ban Ki-moon: Brazil has a leading role in climate – 08/30/2023 – Environment

The South Korean Ban Ki-moon, the eighth secretary general of the UN (United Nations), from 2007 to 2016, highlighted that Brazil is seen as a global reference in the fight against climate change, especially for sheltering the Amazon rainforest .

“Brazil has a leading role in the fight against climate change”, he said, praising the initiative of President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva (PT) to apply for Belém, capital of Pará, to host, in 2025, the COP30, climate change conference of the UN negotiating the implementation of the Paris Agreement.

“I support President Lula’s initiative and I am certain that the name will be well evaluated,” he said. “Belém is the gateway to the forest.”.

Ki-moon was one of the highlights of the opening ceremony of the International Conference on the Amazon and New Economies, which is being promoted in the same Belém, by Ibram (Brazilian Mining Institute).

He warned that the intensification of climate change, shortly after the Covid-19 pandemic, is even undermining the implementation of the SDGs (Sustainable Development Goals) of the United Nations and increasing social inequalities.

He recalled that, personally concerned with the ongoing impoverishment, he joined the group of economists who, in an open letter addressed to the UN secretary general, António Guterres, and the president of the World Bank, Ajay Banga, asked for “more ambitious” targets for combat inequality and income disparity.

In his speech in Belém, he was emphatic in stating that this year the world is experiencing intensely the effects of climate change in fires, droughts, floods, leaving homeless people and leading to movements of large masses of people, increasing the risk of hunger and disease. He cited Greece and Hawaii.

“Climate change is already with us, and we need to act together. I will repeat what I always say, there is no planet B.”

Ki-moon also recalled that Brazil is already suffering from changes in climate and cited as an example the torrential rains that fell on the north coast of São Paulo, between February 18th and 19th, the highest recorded in 24 hours in the country’s history.

“More than 600 millimeters fell in a single Carnival night, killing 65 people”, he pointed out.

He stated that most countries are working to reach zero emissions by 2050. However, he warned that large emitters may still take a little longer, which keeps the world on alert.

China, the biggest emitter of greenhouse gases, for making intensive use of fossil fuels such as coal, to generate electricity, has the goal of changing polluting thermal plants for nuclear and renewable power plants, to neutralize emissions by 2060. Unfortunately , he pointed out, another major emitter, India, says it won’t reach that target until 2070.

He recalled that the world has just experienced the hottest July in history, and that, on average, the temperature is already 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels and absolutely cannot advance towards 2 °C. Halting the rise in temperature is already becoming a matter of survival.

“Studies indicate that in the next hundred years the planet may experience the sixth episode of mass extinction in its history. When this type of event occurs, it means that 75% of species disappear in a short period of time”, he said.

“The fifth extinction event occurred 65 million years ago. What our generation does now will define life on the planet for decades to come.” This last phenomenon, say the researchers, marked the extinction of the dinosaurs, probably because of the fall of an asteroid on Earth.

Ban Ki-moon is a longtime organizer within the climate change debate, working to mobilize government and business to jointly tackle the issue.

“We need to take action and we need to do it through international cooperation. No country can fight climate change alone,” he said in the interview he gave to the Sheet in 2015, on the eve of COP21, when he still commanded the UN.

“The longer we delay or postpone action, the more expensive it will be to contain climate change.”

Despite being an activity that has historically harmed the environment, the mining sector in Brazil seeks to mark its place in this agenda.

In his speech at the opening of the event, the entity’s president, former minister Raul Jungmann, reinforced that by promoting the conference in Belém, he seeks to insert the sector in the global mobilization for the transition to a low-carbon economy.

Ibram institutionally defends that the mining sector, supported by new technologies and consistent ESG policies (acronym in English for environmental, social and corporate governance sustainability) can help make the development of the Amazon region compatible with forest conservation and combat the poor.

Participating in the conference are the presidents of companies that are a reference in the sector, such as Eduardo Bartolomeo, from Brazil’s Vale, the largest producer of iron ore, pellets and nickel, Otavio Carvalheira, from Alcoa Brasil, which operates bauxite mines and alumina refineries, and Ana Cabral, who runs Sigma Lithium, the mining company that most extracts lithium in Brazil.

Bartolomeu highlighted at the opening of the event that Vale managed to build sustainable mining in the region in 40 years and intends to intensify this action.

“Staying in mining is not enough,” he said. “We have the opportunity to develop a new economy. Vale understands that a solution based on nature is part of the business.”

Executives dedicate special attention to detailing their companies’ socio-environmental initiatives within the global effort of the business sector to make the transition to a low-carbon economy.

Also supporting and participating in the conference is the president of Rohitesh Dhawan ICMM (acronym in English for the International Council on Mining and Metals).

The governor of Pará, Helder Barbalho, highlighted at the opening that the fight against deforestation had advanced this year, as a first step in the strategy of an economy based on the standing forest.

“After difficult years, from January to August, we had a 44% drop in deforestation,” he said. “Comparing the months of August, the fall was 68%.”

Barbalho stated that the state will develop the bioeconomy, from the promotion of investments in innovation and research, alongside the development of productive chains and sustainable businesses.

“We are here to propose a development model for a low-carbon economy that can keep the forest standing,” he said.

_{The reporter traveled at the invitation of Ibram (Brazilian Mining Institute).}