WASHINGTON: President Joe Biden and his Brazilian counterpart Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva said on Friday at the White House that the two biggest countries in the Americas have successfully seen off attacks on their democracies and will now work together on fighting the climate crisis.

“Both our nations’ strong democracies have been tested,” Biden told Lula, and “both in the United States and Brazil, democracy prevailed.” Meeting in the Oval Office, Biden and Lula expressed solidarity over their similar paths.

Biden defeated Donald Trump in 2020, but two months later, a mob of Trump supporters stormed Congress believing his conspiracy theory that he’d been the real election winner.

In Brazil, Lula defeated right-winger Jair Bolsonaro and took office this January, but a mob of Bolsonaro supporters stormed government buildings shortly after. “We have some issues on which we can work together,” Lula told Biden. “First is to never again allow” the anti-democratic mob attacks.

Touting Brazil’s return to the international arena, Lula said his predecessor’s “world started and ended with fake news — in the morning, afternoon and at night. It seemed that he despised international relations.” Biden, referring to Trump, quickly answered: “Sounds familiar.”

Biden and Lula stressed their mutual commitment to saving the Amazon rainforest and fighting global warming — efforts that Bolsonaro and Trump both sidelined.

Biden said their “shared values... put us on the same page, particularly, especially, when it comes to the climate crisis.” Brazil is seeking US participation in the Amazon Fund, an international scheme to finance anti-deforestation efforts in Brazil, and Lula walked away from the Oval Office voicing moderate confidence that would happen.

“I think they will,” Lula told reporters. “I not only think they will, but I think that it’s necessary they participate.” He added that while the meeting had not specifically addressed the Amazon Fund, he had brought up “the responsibility of rich countries to assume responsibility to fund countries with rainforests and not only in Brazil.”

In a joint US-Brazil statement that followed the meeting, the White House said it hoped to “work with Congress to provide funds for programmes to protect and conserve the Brazilian Amazon, including initial support for the Amazon Fund.” Lula told Biden in the Oval Office that during his 2003-2010 term as president, he had committed Brazil to drastic reductions in the deforestation of the world’s largest rainforest, which is often described as the “lungs of the world” for its massive greenhouse gas absorption.

However, “in the last few years, the rainforest in the Amazon was invaded by political irrationality, human irrationality, because we had a president who sent people to deforest, sent gold diggers into the Indigenous areas,” he said, referring to Bolsonaro.

Biden has made US leadership on fighting climate change one of his main priorities — starting by putting the United States back into the Paris climate accord after Trump exited the historic deal, which aims to slow global warming.

Published in Dawn, February 12th, 2023