Leaders of the BRICS group of developing nations prepared to address the shared challenges of climate change on Monday, the final day of their summit in Rio de Janeiro, demanding that wealthy nations fund global mitigation of greenhouse emissions.
Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva has touted the importance of the Global South in tackling global warming as he prepares to host the United Nations climate summit in November.
Still, a joint statement from BRICS leaders released on Sunday argued that fossil fuels will continue to play an important role in the global energy mix, particularly in developing economies.
“We live in a moment of many contradictions in the whole world. The important thing is that we are willing to overcome these contradictions,” Brazil’s Environment Minister Marina Silva said on the sidelines of the summit, when asked about the plans to extract oil off the coast of the Amazon rainforest.
In their joint statement, BRICS leaders underscored that providing climate finance “is a responsibility of developed countries towards developing countries,” which is the standard position for emerging economies in global negotiations.
Their declaration also mentioned the group’s support for a fund that Brazil proposed to protect endangered forests – the Tropical Forests Forever Facility – as a way for emerging economies to fund climate change mitigation beyond the mandatory requirements imposed on wealthy nations by the 2015 Paris Agreement.
China and the UAE signaled in meetings with Brazilian Finance Minister Fernando Haddad in Rio that they plan to invest in the fund, two sources with knowledge of the discussions Reuters media last week.
The joint statement from BRICS leaders also blasted policies such as carbon border taxes and anti-deforestation laws, which Europe has recently adopted, for imposing what they called “discriminatory protectionist measures” under the pretext of environmental concerns.
(Reuters)