Biden urges climate progress as Brazil leader joins Americas summit

LOS ANGELES, United States — Joe Biden sought Thursday to step up action on climate at an Americas summit with hopes for at least small progress with Brazil, whose far-right leader will hold a potentially tense meeting with the US president.

Some two dozen leaders have descended on Los Angeles for the Summit of the Americas, where Biden urged both governments and the private sector to show that democracy can work.

The summit comes as China makes rapid inroads in Latin America, long viewed by Washington as its turf, although Biden has steered clear of big-dollar pledges and has instead sought cooperation in targeted areas.

"We stand at an inflection point. More is going to change in the next 10 years than has changed in the last 30 years in the world," Biden told business leaders Thursday on the sidelines of the summit.

"I find no reason why the Western Hemisphere over the next 10 years is not developed into the most democratic region in the world," he said.

Biden urged the hemisphere to make efforts on promoting more equitable growth and "kicking our action on climate change into high gear."

Opening the formal talks with leaders, Biden took a veiled swipe at his predecessor Donald Trump, saying that he was offering "proposals that I think are a far cry from what we saw from a previous American administration."

Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris together met with leaders of Caribbean nations that are particularly vulnerable to rising sea levels.

One outlier from the international chorus to battle climate change has been Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro, a champion of agribusiness.

As such he has horrified environmentalists, who warn that further erosion of the Amazon rainforest will disrupt a vital natural sink for the planet's carbon emissions.

Ahead of Biden's first meeting with Bolsonaro on Thursday, the White House said Brazil, Colombia and Peru would join a US-backed initiative to explore ways to reduce Amazon deforestation motivated by commodities industries.

The White House also said that Brazil and four other nations were joining a renewable energy initiative launched at last year's UN climate summit in Copenhagen.

In the pact, countries promise to work toward a goal of 70 percent renewables in their energy mix by 2030. 

Despite coming under criticism over the Amazon, Brazil -- the sixth most populous nation -- has one of the least carbon-intensive economies for a major economy and already meets the goal on renewables, mostly through hydropower.

The 'Tropical Trump'

The meeting with Bolsonaro could be awkward due to more than climate. Bolsonaro was an ally of Biden's predecessor Donald Trump and has appeared to follow the former president's playbook by alleging that Brazil's October elections are threatened by fraud.

On the eve of his trip, Bolsonaro went further by backing Trump's claims of irregularities in the 2020 US election won by Biden. There has been no evidence of widespread fraud.

Jake Sullivan, Biden's national security advisor, said the president would not shy away from discussing the importance of free elections.

Bolsonaro has trailed in early polls against his likely challenger, former president Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, a leftist icon who was jailed on controversial corruption charges.

A victory by Lula would mark a further swing to the left in Latin America. Colombia, one of the closest US allies, could see a historic shift on June 19 if there is a victory by leftist Gustavo Petro, who topped the first round of voting.

While promising to work with leaders across ideology, Biden has held firm against inviting the leftist leaders of Cuba, Nicaragua and Venezuela on the grounds that they are autocrats.

His stance led to a boycott of the summit by Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, a crucial partner on addressing rising migration into the United States.

Harris started the week-long summit by announcing commitments of $1.9 billion by businesses in El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras in hopes of creating jobs and discouraging migration -- an issue seized upon by Trump's Republican Party.

Also at the summit, the Biden administration announced a plan to help train 500,000 health workers in Latin America and a $300 million project to improve food security, with Russia's invasion of Ukraine disrupting grain exports.