A stark warning of “more hunger, displacement and loss” from the UN chief was met by a deafening silence from the world’s top polluters at the Brazil climate summit. The leaders of the United States, China, and India all snubbed the preliminary gathering in Belem, revealing a terrifying global divide.
UN Secretary-General António Guterres did not mince words, calling the failure to act “deadly negligence” and a “moral failure.” He warned that every fraction of a degree of warming would have devastating human consequences.
Guterres’s criticism that world powers “remain captive to fossil fuel interests” was powerfully illustrated by the empty chairs of the top three emitters. Their absence undermines the global consensus needed to tackle the climate crisis.
Into this void stepped Brazil’s President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, with a tangible proposal. His “Tropical forests Forever Facility” is a $5.5 billion fund to pay 74 developing nations to protect the very forests needed to prevent the “hunger and displacement” Guterres warned of.
The fund, backed by $3 billion from Norway, is a loan-based system that makes preservation profitable. It also allocates 20 percent to Indigenous peoples, offering a new, just path forward, but one that must now proceed without the world’s superpowers.