Sharm El-Sheikh – Brazil’s president-elect Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva talked on the phone with Egypt’s president Abdel Fattah El-Sisi and invited him to visit Brazil, said Brazil’s ambassador to Egypt, Antonio Patriota (pictured) in an interview with ANBA on the last day of the United Nations Climate Change Conference, COP27, held in the resort town of Sharm El-Sheikh on the southern tip of the Sinai Peninsula, on the coastal strip along the Red Sea.
Patriota said that El-Sisi accepted the invitation but still doesn’t know whether he’ll go to the inauguration of Lula on January 1, 2023, or some other point in time. The two presidents are bound to strengthen bilateral relations between the two countries, Patriota said. The Egyptian president also proposed a direct flight between Cairo and São Paulo by carrier Egypt Air in the near future. Patriota added there is no competition for COP30 in Brazil. Lula has proposed to hold the 2025 conference in some state in the Amazon region.
“The president-elect was very grateful for the special invitation from the host country to attend the summit – and this wasn’t a bilateral visit, it was for an event, and as such, it got a special attention. The president-elect phoned president El-Sisi to thank him and invite him to visit Brazil, recognizing the importance of Egypt as the largest trade partner in Africa and one of the largest among Arab countries,” the ambassador said.
Egypt has a free trade agreement with Mercosur and could be a future partner in several other areas, too, Patriota said. “The idea is transforming this relation into a strategic partnership. There’s so much that bring us together […] Historically, we’ve efficiently cooperated and consulted each other in the multilateral system, and that in itself builds trust, a reciprocal knowledge that deserves to be consolidated in a stronger cooperation framework with high-level visits,” the ambassador said.
There’s a great landscape of possibilities in cooperation between Brazil and Egypt in in agriculture, Patriota said. “An agreement was signed between [Brazilian research corporate agency] Embrapa and its Egyptian counterpart. Egypt is a large food importer and one of the countries that have been affected the most by the war in Ukraine, as it’s a huge wheat buyer,” the ambassador said.
Brazil at COP27
Patriota said that Brazil has been well represented as one of the largest governmental and non-governmental delegations at COP27. He believes the government’s, the civil society’s and the Legal Amazon Consortium’s pavilions showed “the different dimensions that Brazil represents, its relationship with the issue that became a key priority for the international community, which really wants to hear the Brazilian voice, and this voice has made itself heard,” he said.
“I cannot fail to mention the presence of the president-elect, which had a large impact with a speech about Brazil’s being committed to an agenda that affects us all and also an example of an energy mix that is one of the world’s cleanest and is rapidly advancing towards sustainability,” the ambassador said, also mentioning the challenge regarding the Amazon forest and Brazil’s announcement to be the venue of COP30 in 2025. “The decision is still to be made formal, but I was informed that there is still no competition, so we are very well positioned to attract the world’s eyes on everything we positively represent,” he said.
Patriota talked about the rainforest alliance involving Brazil, Indonesia and Congo, and the desire to strengthen coordination with Amazon neighboring countries. “Within the Amazon Cooperation Treaty Organization (ACTO), they meet and coordinate each other but have never took a leading role yet nor gotten involved in a summit with all presidents, so this is part of the agenda, too, and a sign of a new subregional, regional consciousness of what needs to be done to ensure sustainability and social progress within this new consciousness of what we have to offer, which is definitely not little,” the ambassador said.
Negotiations
Patriota met on Friday (18) with ambassador Paulino Franco de Carvalho Neto, secretary of Political Multilateral Affairs of Brazil’s Foreign Ministry. “He believes that the negotiations are advancing slowly. It’s great that loss and damage made into the agenda and that there’s a larger consciousness in the developed world of how they’ll have to contribute to mitigate the suffering that the climate changing is causing in countries that contribute very little to the global warming – that’s the injustice, right there. And Egypt, as the host country, brought climate justice to the center of the debate, an issue that Brazil should pay close attention to, with a generous regard towards Africa, the small islands, and the challenges they’ve faced,” the diplomat said.
According to him, the issue of loss and damage funding is making the negotiations hard. “It’s difficult, because although the international agreement s acknowledge common but different responsibilities that are larger for those who historically polluted the most and commitments to invest in resources that assist the least developed countries, there’s a tremendous resistance to put this into practice, and I believe everyone – the private sector, the academy, the civil society, and the developed world – must push until this resistance is overcome, as this is not a favor we’re asking, it’s an obligation and a commitment to be met, so demanding that a promise is kept is the least we can do. From now on we’ll no longer shy away from this debate,” he said.
Antonio Patriota had headed the Embassy of Brazil in Cairo for three years. He said this is usually the period he stays in each post.
Translated by Guilherme Miranda