Discurso do Representante Permanente, Embaixador Sérgio França Danese, pelo Dia Internacional das Florestas - "Celebrando as Florestas e os Alimentos" - 21 de março de 2025 (texto em inglês)

 Statement by the Permanent Representative of Brazil to the United Nations, Ambassador Sérgio França Danese, on the International Day of Forests – “Celebrating Forests and Foods”
March 21st, 2025 

Excellencies,

Dear colleagues,

Forests are guardians of biodiversity and essential providers of food, livelihoods and resilience for millions around the world.

This year’s theme, “Celebrating Forests and Foods,” reminds us that forests are not just carbon sinks; they are the source of sustenance for countless communities, particularly Indigenous Peoples and traditional populations who have long preserved and nurtured them.

Brazil is proud to stand at the forefront of global efforts to conserve and protect forests and promote sustainable development in its three dimensions.

Under President Lula’s leadership, we have taken decisive action to reverse deforestation and strengthen conservation policies. Between August and November 2024 alone, deforestation fell 77.2% in the Pantanal and 48.4% in the Cerrado — two of the world’s most vital biomes. These results demonstrate that, with strong political will, we can reconcile environmental protection and economic growth.

Yet, safeguarding our forests requires global cooperation. This is why Brazil has championed innovative financial solutions, such as the Tropical Forest Finance Facility (TFFF).

By leveraging concessional capital and private sector investments, the TFFF offers a new model for financing large-scale forest protection while supporting sustainable livelihoods.

Such mechanisms are essential to meeting the ambitious goals of the Convention on Biological Diversity and its Global Biodiversity Framework, as well as the UNFCCC and its Paris Agreement.

At the same time, Brazil is advancing globally a vision of the bioeconomy that places nature and people at the center of development.

Within the framework of the G20 High-Level Principles on Bioeconomy, adopted in 2024 under the Brazilian G-20 Presidency, we are working to scale up sustainable production systems that respect biodiversity, foster local innovation and create jobs rooted in traditional knowledge and cutting-edge science.

In the Amazon and beyond, bioeconomy offers a path to prosperity that does not come at the expense of our forests but instead thrives because of them.

Looking ahead, Brazil is honoured to host COP30 in Belém, at the heart of the Amazon. This will be a defining moment for climate and biodiversity action — a chance for us to align global financial flows with nature protection, strengthen the role of forests in food security and accelerate just transitions for communities that depend on them.

As COP30 President-Designate Ambassador André Corrêa do Lago recently stated, we must transform this decade into an inflection point for global climate action, for which forests occupy a central place.

Brazil stands ready to work with all partners to ensure that forests — whether in the Amazon, the Congo Basin, Southeast Asia or elsewhere — continue to nourish our planet, our people, and our future.

And let us celebrate the International Day of Forests by reminding the simple words of the Brazilian Indigenous leader Ailton Krenak, who reminds us: “Nature is not something separate from us. It is part of who we are. If we harm it, we harm ourselves.”

Thank you