:quality(75)/cloudfront-us-east-1.images.arcpublishing.com/elcomercio/5GPCJ4VVMVCL3D4TWWWEEH266I.jpg "Greta Thunberg calls the attitude of Brazilian leaders towards the environment")
Swedish environmental activist Greta Thunberg said on Friday that it is “extremely shameful” what Brazilian leaders are doing with the environment and with indigenous peoples, in a virtual message before the federal Senate of Brazil.
Thunberg, 18 years old and known globally for her school strike against climate change, participated remotely in an upper house session dedicated to the latest report of the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).
“Brazil clearly did not start this crisis, but it added a lot of fuel to this fire,” she said, on global warming. “The errors of leaders worlds have no excuse; Brazil has no excuse for not accepting his responsibility”, she added before the legislators in a brief but forceful message.
The Amazon, mainly expanded in Brazilian territory, “is on the edge,” the activist warned. “It is emitting more carbon than it consumes due to deforestation and fires, and this is happening as we watch,” she said.
“This is being fed directly by his government,” she told the senators, referring to the administration of Jair Bolsonaro.
The activist called for uniting behind science to pursue the goals of the Paris Agreement on climate change, and thus “protect the Amazon and indigenous peoples.”
Indigenous peoples, 0.5% of the 213 million Brazilians, have faced the agribusiness sector for decades to defend their reserves, which are frequent targets of illegal invaders, miners and loggers.
“People from all over the world are looking at them,” Greta Thunberg also warned.
The IPCC report released in August indicated that global warming is developing faster than expected, especially as a consequence of human activity.