Brazilian President Ignacia de Silva Lula may have been inspired by the poverty of his childhood, but when he told the G20 Summit in Rio that “hunger and poverty are not the result of scarcity or natural phenomena. He also announced the launching of a global alliance against poverty and hunger with 91 countries on board. This was an acknowledgement that the problem of climate change, which faces all countries, brings with it poverty and hunger. This linking of global warming and poverty is significant, especially at a time when the leading power in the G20, the USA, has just elected a President who does not accept that global warming is even occurring.
Within this geopolitical context, it should not be forgotten that Brazil is one of the BRICS, and as such poised to make the transition to great-power status. Any alliance that it builds is of interest, and its having launched an alliance against poverty while COP29 is not yet fully over, is a subtle challenge to the USA, which has claimed the status of sole superpower even since the USSR collapsed. It should also not be forgotten that Brazil is home to the majority of the Amazonian rain-forest which, along with the Congolese rain-forest, forms part of the ‘lungs’ through which the plant’s carbon dioxide is converted into oxygen. President da Silva was elected this time by defeating Jair Bolsonaro, who saw no reason not to hand over the rain-forest to land developers who would burn down their portion. It would perhaps be too much to expect a politician to pass up a chance of trashing an opponent, even though he was committed to environmental causes before Bolsonaro had entered politics.
Brazil may be big enough for its domestic politics to have global environmental consequences, but it is not so big as to make it possible to ignore the link between poverty and environmental degradation. The G20 is primarily focussed on trade, but that will become meaningless if attention is not paid to the environment it is happening in. Unless the entire G20 unite to stop spewing noxious gasses into the atmosphere, the planet might not make it, with the result that the G20 probably wouldn’t either. Environmental sensitivity is not the best policy, but the only one.
