US President Joe Biden and Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva at the White House on Friday said that the two biggest countries in the Americas would work together on fighting the climate crisis after both fended off attacks on their legislative bodies.
Meeting in the Oval Office, Biden and Lula stressed their mutual commitment to saving the Amazon rainforest and fighting global warming — efforts that were sidelined by their predecessors, former US president Donald Trump and former Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro.
Biden said that “shared values ... put us on the same page, particularly, especially, when it comes to the climate crisis.”
Photo: Reuters
Brazil is seeking US participation in the Amazon Fund, an international scheme to finance anti-deforestation efforts in Brazil, and Lula after the meeting voiced moderate confidence that it would happen.
“I not only think [the US] will, but I think that it’s necessary they participate,” Lula told reporters.
He added that while the meeting had not specifically addressed the Amazon Fund, he had brought up “the responsibility of rich countries to assume responsibility to fund countries with rainforests and not only in Brazil.”
In a joint statement that followed the meeting, the White House said it hoped to “work with Congress to provide funds for programs to protect and conserve the Brazilian Amazon, including initial support for the Amazon Fund.”
Lula told Biden at the White House that during his term as president from 2003 to 2010, he had committed Brazil to drastic reductions in the deforestation of the world’s largest rainforest, which is often described as the “lungs of the world” for its massive greenhouse gas absorption.
However, “in the last few years, the rainforest in the Amazon was invaded by political irrationality, human irrationality, because we had a president who sent people to deforest, sent gold diggers into the indigenous areas,” he said, referring to Bolsonaro.
Biden has made US leadership on fighting climate change one of his main priorities, starting by putting the US back into the Paris climate accord after Trump exited the historic deal, which aims to slow global warming.
In the Oval Office, the two leaders also expressed solidarity over their similar paths in confronting challenges to their democratic institutions.
“Both our nations’ strong democracies have been tested,” Biden told Lula, and “both in the United States and Brazil, democracy prevailed.”
Biden defeated Trump in 2020, but two months later, a mob of Trump supporters stormed the US Congress on his urgings that the electoral process in some areas was not legitimate.
Lula defeated Bolsonaro and took office last month, and a mob of Bolsonaro supporters stormed government buildings shortly after with similar claims of election illegitimacy.
“We have some issues on which we can work together,” Lula told Biden. “First is to never again allow” attacks on their legislative bodies.
Touting Brazil’s return to the international arena, Lula said his predecessor’s “world started and ended with fake news — in the morning, afternoon and at night. It seemed that he despised international relations.”
Biden, referring to Trump, quickly answered: “Sounds familiar.”
One area where Biden and Lula sharply disagree is over Ukraine, and the subject of Russia’s invasion did not come up during their introductory remarks, before reporters were ushered from the Oval Office.
Biden has spearheaded an unprecedented Western effort to rally behind Ukraine, providing aid, weaponry, military training and diplomatic support as the country struggles to repel the Russian war machine.
However, several major democratic countries — notably India, South Africa and Brazil — have largely remained on the sidelines, refusing to help Ukraine militarily and calling for a diplomatic resolution.
After the meeting was over, Lula told reporters that he wanted to assemble an international “group of countries that aren’t directly or indirectly involved in the war of Russia against Ukraine so that we can have a possibility to build peace.”
“I’m convinced that we need to find a way out to end this war. I found Biden shared the same concern,” he said. “The first thing is to stop the war.”
In a sign of rekindled chemistry between the two leaders, Lula invited Biden to visit Brazil, the joint statement said, “and President Biden accepted the invitation.”
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