Ahead of the landmark 30th annual United Nations global climate change conference this year in Belém, Brazil—also known as COP30—sociologist and Brazilian First Lady Rosângela “Janja” Lula da Silva joined Food Tank at Climate Week NYC for a special discussion.
Brazil made headlines earlier this year by lifting 40 million people out of food insecurity in two years, representing one of the fastest recorded improvements in the world. The country was removed from the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) Hunger Map, thanks in large part to policies including local and agroecological school meals, raised minimum wages, legal recognition of a right to food, and support for smallholder and Indigenous farmers.
First Lady da Silva says her husband, President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, is making agriculture and strong rural communities central to the government’s approaches to a variety of policy priorities.
“It has everything to do with public policy, and it all sums up to political will,” First Lady da Silva says, speaking in Portuguese with an English translator. “There has to be the will to do things, and this is the way that we are going to be able to fight hunger and have food security.”
The panel discussion was organized with support from Merijn Dols, Valeria Nicolini, and Aya Okawa of NOW Partners.
Building political will and addressing complex modern challenges means changing the ways we think about who’s involved in creating solutions, First Lady da Silva says.
“I try to do things differently. From the standpoint of my professional life, with my knowledge and wisdom, I try to not fit into a regular box,” she says.
Too often, she says, decision-making spaces and negotiation tables are filled with “white men in ties”—not women, who are frequently the ones most affected by extreme climate events like recent flooding in the southern portion of the country and drought conditions in the Amazon.
“These women are the ones suffering the violence,” First Lady da Silva says. “And they showed great resilience. They were able to reinvent themselves. This is very beautiful to see how they resist and transform; not just the farm women, but the water women, the forest women.”
To achieve that goal, the Brazilian government is about to launch guidelines requiring that companies, in order to be considered sustainable, will have to reach equity on gender and race.
“Since we have this potential to be a great leader on the topic of sustainability, we wanted to make it very clear that for us it’s not only about environmental and climate dimensions,” says Cristina Fróes de Borja Reis, Deputy Secretary for Sustainable Economic Development at the Brazil Ministry of Finance, during the panel discussion with First Lady da Silva. “Sustainability is also about economic and social dimensions. We have to grow and develop while we reduce inequalities.”
The country’s approach to COP30 is grounded in a philosophy of “mutirão,” an Indigenous word referring to shared work toward a collective goal. Sustainability discussions in Brazil also invoke the curupira, a forest spirit in Brazilian folk culture that guards rainforests and punishes humans for environmental destruction, de Borja Reis says.
“The message we want to pass on is that all people should protect forests and the biome and nature, for nowadays and future generations,” says de Borja Reis.
But as First Lady da Silva says, we cannot expect COP30 to end climate change altogether within the 12 days of the conference—just as, like Food Tank President Danielle Nierenberg said during the conversation with First Lady da Silva, commitments to sustainable action have to go beyond Climate Week NYC.
“COP is not just happening in Belem,” First Lady da Silva says. “COP has to be embedded in all of us, inside of us and in our territories around the world. It has to be embedded in everything that we do.”
Articles like the one you just read are made possible through the generosity of Food Tank members. Can we please count on you to be part of our growing movement? Become a member today by clicking here.
Photo by Ryan Rose for Food Tank.
