“Global warming modifies the rainfall pattern and raises sea levels. Droughts, floods, storms and fires are increasingly frequent and undermine food and energy security,” said Lula on the opening day of the Summit.

For da Silva, the effects of climate change are not perceived by everyone in the same way. “It is the poorest, women, indigenous people, the elderly, children, young people and migrants, who are impacted the most,” he noted, and called on the nations that historically contributed the most to global warming to assume the greatest costs of combating it, because “this is a debt accumulated over two centuries.”

He stated that since the United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP) in Copenhagen, Denmark, in 2009, rich countries should have provided $100 billion a year in new and additional climate finance to developing countries, but that promise was never fulfilled.

He went on to add that “it will be of no use if the rich world arrives at future COPs boasting of its reductions in carbon emissions, if responsibilities continue to be transferred to the Global South.”

According to the president, there is a lack of resources, and last year “the world spent 2.24 trillion dollars on weapons. That mountain of money could be channeled towards sustainable development and climate action.”

“The G20 must promote this effort, respecting the concept of common but differentiated responsibilities and valuing the three conventions of Rio 92: climate, biodiversity and desertification,” he stressed.

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