São Paulo – In his speech at the global Summit on Climate via a video link on Thursday, 22, Brazil’s president Jair Bolsonaro repeated a commitment to end illegal deforestation in Amazon rainforest by 2030, reduce the country’s greenhouse gas emissions in up to 37% by 2025 and 40% by 2030, and reach climate neutrality by 2050.
The two-day virtual event started today and is organized by the United States government. Some 40 countries were invited, including Saudi Arabia.
President Joe Biden pledged to cut US fossil fuel emissions up to 50% by 2030. The climate issue was one of the platforms of his presidential campaign last year. Now, Biden repairs the actions of former president Trump, resuming the environment works. The country rejoined the Paris Agreement in February. “It’s about providing a better future for all of us,” Biden said.
The Climate Summit precedes the 26th United Nations Climate Change Conference, COP26, to be held from November 1st to 12 in Glasgow, Scotland, under the presidency of the United Kingdom. One of its main goals is to prevent the planet’s average temperature from rising above 1.5 degrees Celsius this century.
“Brazil participated with less than 1% of historic greenhouse effect gas emissions, even though it is one of the world’s biggest economies. As it stands today, we account for less than 3% of yearly global emissions,” Bolsonaro said in a conciliatory speech.
The president mentioned Brazil relies on cleaner energy sources, with investment in solar, wind, hydraulic and biomass power, and talked about its pioneering efforts in renewable biofuels.
“I’ve determined that our climate neutrality should be reached by 2050 – ten years earlier than the previous prediction,” said the Brazilian president. He also stressed the commitment to eliminate illegal deforestation by 2030. “We are open to international cooperation,” he emphasized.
Saudi Arabia
Saudi Arabia’s king Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud also took part in the summit on Thursday. He called for a global approach to tackling the climate change. He believes the climate issue recognize no national borders. He also outlined Saudi Arabia’s investment in clean and renewable energy.
“The objective is sustainable development, and in order to achieve this, there must be a comprehensive methodology that takes into account the different developments and circumstances that exist around the world,” Salman said.
He said the kingdom had launched packages of strategies and regulations with the aim of producing 50% of the country’s energy needs by 2030 using clean, renewable sources.
“Enhancing the level of international cooperation is the optimal solution to meeting the challenges of climate change,” he said.
He added that crown prince Mohammed bin Salman has recently announced two new initiatives: the Green Saudi Initiative and the Green Middle East Initiative, which aim to reduce carbon emissions in the region by more than 10% of current global contributions. “These initiatives also aim at planting 50 billion trees in the region,” he said.
Chinese president Xi Jinping and Russian president Vladimir Putin also made commitments to reduce emissions.
*With information from Brazil’s state-run news agency Agência Brasil and Saudi newspaper Arab News.
Watch Jair Bolsonaro’s full speech:
Translated by Guilherme Miranda
