Courtesy of Foreign Policy, an article on Brazil’s efforts to paint his foreign-policy aspirations green:

After meeting with envoys from both the United States and China on Tuesday, Brazilian President-elect Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva gave a speech on Wednesday at the United Nations climate change conference, known as COP27, in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt. As expected, he laid out ambitious goals for restoring Brazil’s record of rainforest stewardship that was greatly diminished under incumbent President Jair Bolsonaro. But Lula also went further, reflecting on the current international order and Brazil’s role in it.

“We spend trillions of dollars on wars that just bring destruction and death while 900 million people across the world don’t have food to eat,” Lula said, pledging “to help construct a global order that is peaceful and based in dialogue, multilateralism, and multipolarity.”

Some elements of Lula’s speech were familiar refrains from his 2003 to 2010 presidential tenure: He advocated for Latin American regionalism, cooperation among countries in the global south, and an expanded U.N. Security Council. But this time, Lula linked these goals to addressing climate change. “There will be no future as long as we keep digging a bottomless pit of inequalities between the rich and the poor,” he said. Climate change “will have the highest profile in the structure of my government.”

During Lula’s last presidency, he co-founded the BRICS grouping of Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa, which focuses on economic cooperation. At COP27, Lula heralded a new partnershipamong Brazil, Indonesia, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo to coordinate policies on rainforest preservation. Together, these three countries are home to 52 percent of the world’s tropical forests that have not been significantly disturbed by human activity.

The long-marinating deal was first discussed during the 2011 to 2016 presidency of Lula’s hand-picked successor, Dilma Rousseff. Its text suggests the countries will work at least partly within the framework of a preexisting U.N. program of payment for conservation known by its acronym, REDD. Although the countries did not announce any new financing, they said they would work together to establish a “funding mechanism” for conservation.

The themes in Lula’s speech were consistent with those of a 68-page policy paper titled “Climate and International Strategy: New Directions for Brazil” that was formally presented to Lula at COP27. His advisors had gotten their hands on the paper before the conference, co-author Adriana Abdenur tweeted, and they used it as input for Lula’s remarks.

A partnership between a think tank affiliated with Lula’s Workers’ Party and the Brazilian environmental policy organization Plataforma CIPÓ, the paper’s co-authors include two members of Lula’s presidential transition team. A third author was reportedly in talks to join the transition team on Thursday. Lula’s foreign affairs advisor, Celso Amorim, wrote its preface, in which he argued that “the fight against the climate crisis will occupy a central space in [Brazil’s] international activity.”

Other organizations have also submitted policy proposals to Lula since his election. But the fact that the aforementioned paper was written by members of his own party and transition team—and featured so prominently in his speech—suggests it may be key to informing his policy as president.

If the plans outlined in the paper come to pass, Brazil’s climate policies under Lula would go beyond simply reducing deforestation and pressuring rich countries to provide more climate financing to poorer ones. The paper’s authors wrote, for example, that the Brazil-Indonesia-Congo rainforest alliance could work together to promote deforestation-free products for sale. In his speech, Lula similarly said medicines and cosmetics could be responsibly sourced from the rainforest.

The paper also proposed that Brazil gradually transform state oil company Petrobras into an energy company with a greater focus on renewables. They suggested that lithium-rich Bolivia be incorporated into South American customs union Mercosur, and that together with Chile—which is not part of the bloc—Mercosur could create a regional governance framework for lithium. Bolivia, Chile, and Argentina together hold more than half of the world’s known lithium reserves, while Brazil holds under 1 percent.

Another recommendation is that Brazil seek Chinese investments for green infrastructure and examine whether the U.S. Inflation Reduction Act (IRA)—a landmark climate bill—could lead to new international cooperation or funding. Though the IRA’s money is overwhelmingly targeted at U.S. businesses, European Commission Vice President Frans Timmermans urged Washington in September to spread some of the money overseas. The BRICS alliance, the authors suggested, could also be mobilized to invest more in green energy projects through its development bank.

Together, the policies pitched in the document would contribute to green industrialization in Brazil. But passing and implementing the proposals is far easier said than done. The United States—which does not face the same fiscal constraints as South American countries—tussled for months over the details of the IRA. In Colombia, new President Gustavo Petro’s pledges to carry out an ambitious transition away from new oil exploration are stoking economic concerns and dividing policymakers, the New York Times reported this week.

It’s precisely because Latin American countries don’t have hundreds of billions of dollars in green stimulus money that it makes sense for them to work together on policies for their green transitions, analysts have argued. The authors of the Brazilian strategy document made the same case. They warned that in another recent global scramble for new technologies—the COVID-19 pandemic and the race for vaccines—the global south got left behind.