Pollution in Medellín, Colombia. The United Kingdom has red-listed seven countries in the Americas—including Colombia—which requires even vaccinated travelers to quarantine. This has been lambasted as a political move in light of the upcoming COP26 in Glasgow, Scotland / credit: Milo Miloezger on Unsplash
Early in October, the United Kingdom introduced new rules for international travel in light of the COVID-19 pandemic. A “red list” of 54 countries was announced that mandated quarantine for passengers from mostly Global South countries. A few days later, the red list was revised to retain seven countries—Colombia, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, Haiti, Panama, Peru and Venezuela.
But how will these travel restrictions affect negotiations at the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC)’s 26th Conference of Parties, also known as COP26? This summit is scheduled to be held next month in Glasgow, Scotland, where delegates from more than 190 countries are convening to figure out how to meet the stipulations of the 2015 Paris Agreement.
However, people from the seven red-listed countries traveling to the United Kingdom must undergo a mandatory quarantine, even if they are vaccinated. And while the U.K. government has announced it will cover quarantine costs, these rules may be contributing to an already inequitable COP set-up. Previous COPs had ended in less-than-ideal outcomes over issues concerning equity.
“[The red list] evidences disparities between countries and the reality of vaccine inequality,” said Maria Alejandra Aguilar, associate lawyer in the climate justice division at Ambiente y Sociedad, an environmental non-governmental organization (NGO) in Colombia. Aguilar is an accredited observer for COP26 and despite her credentials, she worried about being able to travel to Glasgow. “The visa process was a nightmare for me and several delegates—even official ones,” she added, noting how her visa arrived on October 20, two days before her flight, even though she had applied for the visa on July 27.
Aguilar tweeted about her experience with the British Embassy in Colombia, noting how they held onto her passport for two months without an answer. Then on October 6, they asked her what COP26 is and what she intends to do in the United Kingdom.
I want to share the level of incompetence of the @GOVUK visas&immigration- I applied the 5th of August for a visa to attend @COP26 as accredited observer @UKinColombia 2 months without answer + withholding my passport, today this was their reply #COP26pic.twitter.com/JjFcwTwgxU
“I haven’t been able to understand why my country was on the red list, but the U.S. was never on the list, even though they had many COVID cases,” said Adrian Martínez, director and founder of La Ruta del Clima, a Costa Rican NGO focusing on climate governance processes and climate justice. As of publication, the United States had about 80,000 cases per day, whereas Costa Rica had around 600 cases per day. “We felt that we were being differentiated because of where we’re from,” he added.
Until a few days ago, most of Latin America was on the red list. Martínez said that is why countries like Mexico were considering sending only the core team of negotiators to Glasgow. He also added many NGOs in these countries did not try to obtain visas because they thought they would not be able to participate in COP26, given the restrictions.
If a country only sends a core team of negotiators, experts who routinely accompany negotiators to climate-change negotiations very likely will not be doing so because of the uncertainties that have arisen in the process, even with the revised red list. These countries also may reduce the number of negotiators they would send to Glasgow.
Martínez described the situation as a “distraction” from the prep work negotiators and other experts normally engaged during the weeks prior to previous COPs. “How to participate [at COP26] and who can get there has become the main issue,” he explained.
A COP26 spokesperson said ensuring the voices of those most affected by climate change are heard is a “priority for the COP26 Presidency.” The spokesperson also added financial support is available for delegates from developing countries for quarantine stays. But the spokesperson has yet to respond to what extent such financial support can remedy problems Global South representatives have faced in the last few months and will continue to face during negotiations. Meanwhile, the U.K. Department for Transport has yet to reply to this reporter. Questions also were sent to the UNFCCC. This article will be updated when responses are received.
“This closed, gatekeeping approach [to COPs] is political,” Martínez said. “It was supposed to be the most inclusive COP, but it has been the opposite. We had to complain and fight and persevere.”
Rishika Pardikar is a freelance journalist in Bangalore, India.
On August 20, the government of Colombian President Gustavo Petro arrived in Caldono, Cauca, to hear community demands and concerns / credit: Alfonso Prada / Twitter
Editor’s Note: This article was originally published by People’s Dispatch.
On August 20, the newly inaugurated left-wing government of President Gustavo Petro and Vice President Francia Márquez in Colombia launched the first Unified Command Post for Life (PMU) in the municipality of Caldono, in the Cauca department. The PMU is an initiative that aims to achieve total peace and protect the population affected by violence across the country, especially social leaders, human rights activists, environmentalists and former combatants of the demobilized FARC guerilla group.
The launch was led by Interior Minister Alfonso Prada, Environment Minister Susana Muhamad, Labor Minister Gloria Inés Ramírez, and around 30 legislators from across the political spectrum, including the president of the Senate, Roy Barreras, and the president of the Peace Commission of the Senate, Iván Cepeda.
“We have installed the PMU, which is a command post to achieve rapid security in a preventative approach, not in the approach of sadness when we receive the news of the death of social leaders,” Prada said.
Prada explained that the protection plan will cover the 65 municipalities hardest hit by violence in the country, adding that initial emphasis will be placed on “5 to 10 of them, which are in a very delicate situation and are systematically assassinating their leaders.” He said that the state would provide accompaniment and maintain a permanent presence in those 10 municipalities.
The Interior Minister said that the government is particularly committed to the Cauca department. “For us, Cauca is a huge priority… If we achieve integral and total peace in Cauca, I have no doubt that we can dream of having total peace in Colombia,” said Prada.
Prada explained that instructions had been given to the institutions that have powers related to the protection of the lives of social leaders, land defenders, environmentalists, community leaders, peace signatories, land restitution managers, and those who work in crop substitution.
Prada added that the government had already ordered the local authorities to comply with the early warnings issued by the Ombudsman’s Office, especially for the municipalities of Caldono, Buenos Aires and Santander de Quilichao, in Cauca. He also said that the government would strengthen the National Protection Unit (UNP).
For her part, Environment Minister Muhamad stressed that this plan recognizes land defenders as people who make a positive, important and legitimate contribution to the protection of nature and promotion of a safe, clean, healthy and sustainable environment. Muhamad assured that with the beginning of the plan, the implementation of the Escazú Agreement also begins, pending its ratification by the House of Representatives.
With regard to illegal paramilitary groups, Senator Barreras said that dialogues are the only way that allows peace. “The government and the congress have every desire to allow them to reintegrate into society and these command posts for life are spaces for dialogue and listening, the message that we are sending them is that they take advantage of the opportunity to lay down their arms so that they can join the life of Colombia,” said Barreras.
Iniciamos el Plan de Choque para salvaguardar la vida de las y los Líderes Sociales en Colombia, así como de quienes firmaron la paz .
Comisión del Gobierno Nacional, 20 congresistas y la Comunidad Internacional en defensa de la vida y la paz en los Territorio, rumbo al Cauca pic.twitter.com/sTQgD8i0rD
On August 19, the Ombudsman’s Office released a report in which it reported that between January 1 and July 31, 122 social leaders and human rights defenders had been assassinated in different departments of the country. It also reported that Cauca with 19 assassinations, Nariño with 17, Antioquia with 12, and Putumayo with 11, are the departments with the highest number of cases.
According to the Colombian human rights organization Institute of Development and Peace Studies (INDEPAZ), between January 1 and August 20, 119 environmentalists, land defenders, human rights defenders, Afro-descendent, Indigenous, peasant and social leaders had been killed by illegal armed and drug-trafficking groups operating in the country. Additionally, during this period, 32 ex-combatants of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), who were in the reincorporation process, had also been murdered.
Petro and Márquez, during their election campaign, vowed to fight drug trafficking and paramilitarism, and consolidate peace in the country. The day following their inauguration, on August 8, in the first press conference to local media, Petro confirmed the resumption of negotiations with the National Liberation Army (ELN), the largest leftist guerrilla group active in Colombia. On August 11, a delegation of the Colombian government, headed by Foreign Minister Álvaro Leyva Durán, visited Cuba to establish contact with the leadership of the ELN in order to advance towards peace negotiations. On August 20, President Petro announced that in order to further advance in the dialogue with the ELN, the arrest and extradition orders against the members of the insurgency group were suspended. At the same time, he confirmed the restitution of the negotiation protocols with the ELN that had been signed with the government of former president Juan Manuel Santos.
An image of U.S. dollar bills, Canadian dollars, Czech koruna notes and U.K. pound sterlings. Developed countries are required to fund climate-change mitigation and adaption efforts of developing countries / credit: John McArthur on Unsplash
Last month, U.S. Special Presidential Envoy for Climate John Kerry visited India in an effort to bolster the United States’ bilateral and multilateral climate efforts ahead of the 26th Conference of Parties (COP26), which will be held in Glasgow in just a few weeks. Countries that signed the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) will attend the conference to deliberate as well as negotiate actions needed to combat the climate crisis.
Kerry’s visit to India also marked the launch of Climate Action and Finance Mobilization Dialogue (CAFMD). CAFMD is part of the U.S.-India Agenda 2030 Partnership Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and U.S. President Joe Biden announced in April at the Leaders Summit on Climate. The talks took place within the context of India’s membership within an alliance colloquially referred to as “The Quad.” The alliance comprises Australia, Japan, India and the United States, and is aimed at countering a growing China in the Indo-Pacific region.
Soon after Kerry’s visit to India, Quad leaders met at the White House for discussions on a host of issues, including climate change. They agreed to work on climate targets aimed at 2030 and pursue enhanced actions in the 2020s.
But what tools are available to India—and other developing countries—to support them as they face climate-change impacts like eroding coastlines and droughts? And how will such tools be made available?
Mobilizing finance is considered key to helping developing countries meet their emission-reduction targets and adapt to climate-change impacts. At COP15 in Copenhagen in 2009, developed countries committed to a goal of jointly mobilizing $100 billion per year by 2020 to address the needs of developing countries.
But while COP15 set a clear target of $100 billion, it allowed flexibility in terms of what forms of financial support qualify as climate finance. The Paris Agreement, the successor to the Copenhagen Accord, reiterated the $100 billion per year commitment, but it also allows a wide range of financial instruments.
Indian Minister for Environment, Forest and Climate Change Bhupender Yadav (left) and U.S. special presidential climate envoy John Kerry kick off the U.S.-India Climate Action and Finance Mobilization Dialogue on September 13 in New Delhi / credit: twitter/climateenvoy
Developing Countries’ Perspective
Developed and developing countries have different perspectives on climate finance. Chandra Bhushan, a public policy expert and founder/CEO of International Forum for Environment, Sustainability & Technology (iFOREST), explained when developing countries speak of climate-finance requirements, they largely mean public grants from developed countries. But when developed countries talk about climate finance, they mean “everything from loans to grants to bilateral and multilateral funding,” Bhushan said.
Bilateral funding refers to financial support from one country to another. Multilateral funding involves agencies such as the World Bank, which derives its source of funding from multiple countries.
India’s official position on climate finance is only grants and grant-equivalent elements of other instruments, like loans and guarantees, ought to be recognized as climate finance. For example, in a recent interview to CarbonCopy, Rajni Ranjan Rashmi, a former principal negotiator for India at the UN climate change negotiations, said it is “logical” to include only the grant portion, or the concessional part, of the loans in the definition of climate finance.
Publicly available information about CAFMD does not reveal what exactly “financial mobilization” would entail. This reporter filed a Right to Information (RTI) request with the Ministry of Environment, Forests and Climate Change (MoEFCC) for minutes of meetings held between Kerry and the ministry. However, the request was denied.
Bhushan also expressed skepticism, noting how pre-COP launches of dialogues, like CAFMD, are not uncommon. But he said their progress is rarely tracked to ascertain achievements.
Mud cracks formed on a dried-out river bed in the district of Kutch in the Indian state of Gujarat / credit: Renzo D’souza on Unsplash
Unpacking “Finance Mobilization”
In general, “finance mobilization” can happen on both concessional and commercial terms. Arjun Dutt, program lead at Council on Energy, Environment and Water (CEEW) said concessional capital typically is channeled through grants and soft loans to market segments that are not commercially viable to catalyze investment. And as for finance on commercial terms, Dutt noted it typically flows into sectors that have achieved commercial viability and large-scale deployment, such as utility-scale renewable energy.
Elaborating on what India needs, Dutt said if the world wants India to decarbonize at an accelerated pace and commit to net-zero goals, the country “would likely require greater international [climate-finance] flows on both concessional and commercial terms.”
Through financial instruments such as guarantees, concessional capital could help lower the risk of loan defaults with new clean-energy technologies, which could catalyze more private-sector investments, Dutt explained. And as for commercial international capital, it would be needed because of the sheer scale of India’s decarbonization requirements.
Pays to note, in her meeting with Kerry, Indian Minister of Finance and Corporate Affairs Nirmala Sitaraman also underscored a need for enhanced climate finance for developing countries, or funding beyond the $100 billion commitment made at the Copenhagen summit.
Recently, even African nations called for a 10-fold increase to the $100 billion climate finance target.
Climate Finance’s Track Record
Developed countries have largely failed in fulfilling their climate finance obligations, a September 2021 report shows. Out of 23 developed countries that have a responsibility to provide climate finance, only Germany, Norway and Sweden have been paying their fair share of the annual $100 billion goal. More specifically, it states that the United States has the biggest shortfall in paying its fair share of climate finance, based on historical emissions and national income.
Drought in Ooty, a town nestled in the Western Ghats mountain range in the Indian state of Tamil Nadu / credit: Shravan K Acharya on Unsplash
And closer examination of delivered climate finance reveals other issues. According to a report by Oxfam, the share of grants in global public climate finance was only 27 percent in 2019, whereas loans—both concessional and otherwise—totaled 71 percent. The remaining 2 percent comprised finance mobilized from private sources. Oxfam referred to this reliance on loans to fulfill climate-finance obligations “an overlooked scandal.”
Recently, a climate negotiator from a developing country, who anonymously wrote for The Guardian, pointed out how climate finance in the form of loans is creating a debt trap for countries in the Global South, where the COVID-19 pandemic has hit economies.
Interest rates on concessional loans are unequal, too. “The rate of interest in developed countries is around 2 percent and in India, it is around 14 percent,” said Bhushan of iFOREST. “So, if the United States gives a loan for 6 percent, will you consider it as a loan given on concessional terms?”
Funding Mitigation Versus Adaptation
Climate finance usually aids two solutions: Mitigation and adaptation. Mitigation refers to efforts aimed at reducing greenhouse-gas emissions like investments in renewable energy technologies or even making existing energy generation more efficient. Adaptation means remodeling and reorganizing society and the physical environment to address risks posed by climate change. Climate adaptation includes enhancing the resilience of coastal communities with nature-based solutions like restoration of mangroves and providing food security with climate-resilient agricultural practices.
Here, too, disparities exist between the needs of developing countries and what the developed world actually delivers.
Little doubt remains that climate change disproportionately impacts the Global South, given pre-existing conditions like food insecurity and lack of adequate healthcare. And so, countries in this region need as much financial support, if not more, for adaptation as they do for undertaking mitigation measures to arrest the global temperature rise. Even the Paris Agreement recognizes developing countries need equal amounts of funding towards mitigation and adaptation. But funding flows largely towards mitigation.
Oxfam points out 66 percent of global public climate finance supported mitigation while only 25 percent went toward adaptation. “Profitability drives the flow of money,” Dutt said, noting how climate finance goes toward mitigation efforts—like enhancing deployment in the renewable energy sector—and not to adaptation. But this is where public finance—or that which is provided by taxpayer money—can flow.
It also is unclear if developing countries have undertaken climate-change impact assessments and drafted clear policies aimed at mitigation, which could then be implemented using international climate financing.
Solar Power Plant Telangana II in the Indian state of Telangana / credit: Thomas Lloyd Group
Developing Homegrown Climate Technology
Article 4.5 of the UNFCCC states developed countries have undertaken a commitment to
“take all practicable steps to promote, facilitate and finance, as appropriate, the transfer of, or access to environmentally sound technologies and knowledge to other Parties, particularly developing country Parties, to enable them to implement the provisions of the Convention.”
But little clarity is available on what “practicable” entails, what “as appropriate” means and what “environmentally sound technologies” encompass.
More rudimentary questions exist about whether developing countries like India need technology transfers.
“Renewable energy technologies like modules and inverters are produced at a mass scale across the world and even in India. These technologies are well-understood,” Dutt said. The only challenge, Dutt added, is India has not been able to produce renewable-energy equipment at globally competitive rates.
Expressing similar concerns, Bhushan spoke of how technologies like solar photovoltaic (PV) panels have hundreds of parts and algorithms that could have hundreds of intellectual property rights (IPRs). “Many of these IPRs are from developing countries themselves,” he noted. These IPRs are then packaged together and sold to companies to manufacture solar PV modules and panels. “Technology transfer is not like giving a formula to someone to produce a chemical. It is a combination of hundreds of formulas, many owned by Indians themselves,” Bhushan said. “The bottomline is, if you have money, you can buy whatever technology you want.” And so, the issue is not about freeing technology, like with the COVID-19 vaccines.
India has largely handled its own mitigation pathway because the country has access to renewable-energy technologies—both imported and domestically produced. Bhushan said talk of technology transfer is largely rhetoric without substantive demands detailing what exactly developing countries need.
Rishika Pardikar is a freelance journalist in Bangalore, India.
Sonia Guajajara, an Indigenous rights campaigner who was elected this autumn to be a federal lawmaker from the Brazilian state of São Paolo, marched in September with a feminist bloc at a left-wing rally the day after a Bolsonaro supporter threatened two other candidates with a gun / credit: Richard Matoušek
RECIFE, Brazil—On election night, the city of Recife erupted in cheers of joy.
In the capital of the Workers’ Party presidential candidate Luiz Inácio “Lula” da Silva’s home state of Pernambuco, thousands roared as the vote count showed Lula overtaking his rival, right-wing President Jair Bolsonaro. While supporters set off fireworks over the Atlantic Ocean, others made the “L” sign with their fingers and thumbs to indicate support for Lula. When buses couldn’t get through the crowd of revelers, drivers gave up with beaming smiles, making the L as well.
Brazilians had just voted in their most consequential election since democratization.
But, just as after the first-round election, cheers soon turned into murmurs as people lowered their eyes to their phones to see if Lula would retain his lead. This was far from certain, given events earlier that day. The Federal Highway Police (PRF) had conducted over 500 operations by pulling over buses and cars. The miles of traffic jams that ensued impeded people from reaching voting booths, especially in northeastern states like Pernambuco. Then news broke that these operations were part of a plan the Bolsonarista-led PRF had hatched in the presidential palace.
While the Electoral Commission (TSE) condemned this, it did not take action to compensate for lost voting time. By contrast, in the first round, the TSE extended voting for the large Brazilian diaspora in Lisbon, Portugal, after someone wearing the green and yellow colors many Bolsonaristas adorn, broke into a voting booth to double vote, annulling dozens of votes.
“It’s as if,” Rômulo Cavalcante, a lawyer from the northeastern state of Alagoas, told Toward Freedom, ”[the TSE in the second round] was afraid of provoking some kind of conflict.” Due to the highway police’s unprecedented actions, Calvacante believes “democracy in Brazil remains more fragile than ever.”
Contrary to the TSE and PRF’s assurances, the operations stopped some people from voting. Yet, Lula retained his lead. He became the first candidate to beat an incumbent since Brazil emerged from a military dictatorship in the 1980s, but also won with the smallest margin since then (1.8 percent).
“[I] didn’t just defeat a candidate,” Lula proclaimed. “[I] defeated the entire machinery of the Brazilian state.”
Almost three weeks later, Bolsonaro still has not explicitly conceded. His supporters have staged roadblocks around the country, sometimes aided by the PRF. João, a tourist landlord in the northeastern state of Rio Grande do Norte, told Toward Freedom that he believes “the election was stolen.” That echoes a false belief still held by much of the Bolsonaro camp, said Danny Shaw, Latin American and Caribbean Studies Professor at the City University of New York. “[That camp] lives in a parallel universe of half-truths, misinformation and propaganda.”
“But,” as Shaw said, “the fact that Washington recognized [the election results] so early on, put pressure on Bolsonaro and his supporters.” The chances Bolsonaro could stage a successful coup—which his camp was “constantly measuring”—have diminished rapidly.
Former Brazilian President Luiz Inácio “Lula” Da Silva (left) and current Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro (right) are the main contenders in Brazil’s first-round presidential election being held on October 2 / credit: Ricardo Stuckert (right) / Alan Santos / PR (left)
Beyond Bolsonaro
Talk of a Bolsonaro coup has subsided. In the last few days, he and his sons visited the Italian embassy to apply for citizenship, and Bolsonaro has told allies he may leave Brazil on Lula’s inauguration, to be held on New Year’s Day. This may be because he will lose political immunity. “I think he is planning to ask for exile in another country, like Hungary, where [President Viktor] Orbán is his friend or even Italy because he is going to be charged in Brazil,” Cavalcante predicted. That is partly because Italy’s governing party (Brothers of Italy) is far-right, and an iteration of a fascist party.
It seems more likely that Bolsonaro will flee while signaling as little clarity as he can about the result, than stage a coup. He has shown with basic questions—such as whether he’s received a Covid vaccine—that he can maintain strategic obfuscation, and observers have predicted he is likely to do the same with the election’s legitimacy.
Depending on what happens to the charges of wrongdoing that are likely to be brought against him, that could be how he hopes to return to politics in future.
And whatever happens to Bolsonaro, the right will have decent prospects at the next election. It remains to be seen how united it will be. Some elements prefer the anti-institutionalism and inflammatory cultural rhetoric of Bolsonarismo. While others prefer the more rationalized “Third Way” discourse of candidates like surprise third-placed Simone Tebet, who in this campaign was promoted by a significant section of the right-wing media. Both approaches have close ties to agro-business and prioritize what Brazil’s most-read newspaper recently called “fiscal responsibility” over reducing the country’s hunger crisis, in a recent op-ed attacking Lula for prioritizing tackling hunger. The anti-redistributive right in Brazil has been resilient, even when it had to get behind a leader who oversaw hundreds of thousands of avoidable Covid deaths.
The media will have a significant impact on Brazilian discourse over the next four years. Cavalcante explained Brazilians like himself “were successfully manipulated by the media” when former President Dilma Rousseff was deposed in a 2016 procedural coup. And he told Toward Freedom that the media will need to hold accountable politicians who espouse violence, in order to return Brazil to a time when “political polarization [didn’t involve Brazilians] being threatened by their bosses, neighbors and strangers in the street.”
Supporters of Luiz Inácio “Lula” da Silva rally in São Paolo / credit: Richard Matoušek
Neoliberalism’s Future in Brazil
The president-elect faces significant struggles, particularly in reducing the hunger crisis. He has proven credentials, but faces a hostile climate.
Lula’s “Bolsa Família” program of conditional cash transfers during his 2003-11 presidency was cited as a major factor in the 28 percent decline in poverty rates in his first term. Bolsonaro ended Bolsa Família and, despite enacting a different cash transfer scheme, has presided over a huge increase in hunger, from 19 million in late 2020 to 33 million now. This, despite being the fourth-largest food producer in the world.
“Brazil is now back on [the United Nations’] Hunger Map,” Ediane Maria, a newly-elected Socialist and Liberty Party state legislator in São Paulo, told Toward Freedom. “People who eat breakfast today are not sure they can have dinner. Lula started the Zero Hunger programme [including Bolsa Família], which got Brazil off the Hunger Map; but [under Bolsonaro], our country is in a worse state than during the biggest hunger crisis of recent memory in 1993.”
And unlike in the 2000s, Brazil is not benefitting from a commodity boom, increasing pressure from the large section of Brazilian media who advocate smaller state expenditure.
Lula will not have the resources, power, and potentially the will, to transition significantly away from neoliberalism in Brazil. Neoliberalism is the systematic movement of public resources under private control. As Jemima Pierre, the Haiti/Americas coordinator for the U.S.-based Black Alliance for Peace (BAP), told Toward Freedom, “Even though [recent Latin American election-winners have produced] leftist governments, they’re still following the lead of the U.S. in terrible neoliberal policies. So, I think it’s a good thing that Bolsonaro lost. But I also think people need to hold Lula’s feet to the fire.” Pierre worries that “the left is so relieved that Bolsonaro lost that they’re not going to push Lula, because the fear is that if you go against Lula, then you’re going to get this right-wing government back. So, the left is really stuck between a rock and a hard place.”
As long as Lula governs effectively enough to implement key progressive policies, despite his obstacles, he could continue to increase popularity of such politics in Brazil, paving the way for further progression after his term.
An aerial view of the municipality of Tefé in the Amazonian rainforest of Brazil / credit: Rodrigo Kugnharski on Unsplash
Lula’s Global Moves
Advocates of multilateralism and environmentalism view this election positively.
For instance, U.S. human- and labor-rights lawyer Dan Kovalik told Toward Freedom Lula’s victory “would help bring about the multipolar world that we need.”
Lula already has touted creating a cartel of rainforest-endowed countries, including the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Indonesia, to motivate conservation.
“Lula’s first foreign policy visit will be to Argentina to increase and expand the BRICS,” Shaw said, referring to the group of states (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa) that are trying to counter U.S. control over international finance. Lula also advocated the creation of a South America-wide currency—the Sur—during this campaign.
Like any leader, Lula will need to be held to account to meet his stated goals. As Pierre states, “We are happy that there’s a leftist president, but we also remember that it’s the same leftist president who was behind the snuffing out of Haiti sovereignty as it was trying to bring Brazil on the international stage,” referring to the 2004-17 Brazilian-led UN peacekeeping occupation of Haiti, where Brazilian troops abused their power and stayed for years after being asked to leave. Upon Washington’s re-intervention in Haiti this year, Pierre explains that the United States “has worked with leftist governments [like Mexico] to get its work done… What we’re worried about is that Lula will fall into this trap.”
Lula’s victory could probably be considered the crowning achievement of the leftist Pink Tide’s resurgence across Latin America. That’s something BAP National Organizer Ajamu Baraka believes “represents the continued shift of power away from the international colonial ruling classes”—as long as Lula has learned geopolitical lessons from the 2000s.
Inauguration is over a month away. Lula faces strong economic, political, international, environmental and societal pressures that can hinder progressive policymaking. But, just like on election night in Recife, if you’re a progressive or simply espouse democratic values, now is the time for cautious celebration.
Richard Matoušek is a journalist who covers sociopolitical issues in southern Europe and Latin America. He can be followed on Twitter at @RichMatousek and on Instagram at @richmatico.
