Lula: combating inequality has as much priority as the climate crisis

The fight against inequality was, alongside environmental preservation, the central theme of President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva’s speech this Friday (23) at the New Global Financial Pact forum, organized by the French government in Paris, with the presence of of state in different countries.

After talking about the importance of the Amazon in combating the climate crisis, Lula highlighted: “I didn’t come here to talk only about the Amazon. I came here to say that, along with the climate issue, we have to address the issue of world inequality. It is impossible that in a meeting between presidents of important countries, the word inequality does not appear. Wage inequality, race inequality, gender inequality, education inequality, health inequality”.

The president went on to say: “we are an increasingly unequal world, and more and more wealth is concentrated in the hands of fewer people, and poverty concentrated in the hands of more people. If we don’t discuss this issue of inequality, and if we don’t put it as high a priority as the climate issue, we could have a very good climate and people could continue to die of hunger in many countries around the world”.

Read too: Lula stresses the role of the Amazon as an environmental and economic asset

In the case of Brazil, Lula recalled that the country had left the UN hunger map, after its first governments and those of Dilma Rousseff, when 36 million people left absolute poverty and 40 million came to have middle-class purchasing power. .

Thirteen years later, he lamented, “I return to the Presidency of the Republic of Brazil and again, 33 million people are starving. When we left the Presidency, Brazil was the sixth largest economy in the world. Today Brazil is the 12th largest economy in the world. That is, the country has moved backwards, as many other countries have moved backwards. It depends on the government that is elected, it depends on the government that is concerned with the social issue”.

Afterwards, he highlighted the need for national reconstruction: “Everything we did between 2003 and 2016, we will have to redo for the country to grow again”.

poor on budget

The president also pointed out that “the poor were never a problem”. The poor, he said, “will always be a solution when you put it within the country’s budget. But if you forget the poor, and you put everyone else in the budget, there will never be money left over to take care of the most miserable people, because they don’t have a union, they don’t have a party, they don’t march, they don’t make movements, and they live far away. away from the seat of government, they often live on the outskirts. So these people will always be abandoned. And inequality has only increased.

Lula also defended the need for the richest countries to go beyond the occasional contribution of resources and make structuring investments, capable of changing the poverty situation of underdeveloped nations. “We need to stop, at an international level, proselytizing with appeals. ‘Oh, I’m going to help this little thing here, I’m going to help this little thing over there’, when in fact we need to take a leap in quality. And invest in structuring things that change the lives of countries”.

Read too: Lula classifies the EU’s demands for an agreement with Mercosur as a threat

That is why, he added, “I am optimistic about the creation of the Banco dos Brics. That is why I am optimistic about the possibility of creating the Bank of the South. That is why I am optimistic that we will discuss trade currency”.

The Brazilian president also criticized the protectionism of rich countries and its impact on the increase in poverty: “Who does not remember the G-20 discussion in London, when we discussed to avoid protectionism, when we discussed that countries would rich people have to invest in developing countries and poor countries? What happened? The rich countries returned to protectionism. And we are seeing poverty grow on every continent.”