Brazil's President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva has announced that he will be taking the stage at Power Our Planet: Live in Paris to add his voice to those of 20,000 Global Citizens on the Champ de Mars and millions more around the world on June 22. 

President Lula will be calling for urgent action from his fellow world leaders to reform the now 80-year-old global financial system to reflect today's climate realities, and provide vulnerable countries with access to financing solutions to invest in the transition to clean energy and withstanding natural disasters.

“I’m looking forward to joining Power Our Planet: Live in Paris beneath the iconic Eiffel Tower, along with 20,000 activists and fellow music fans,” President Lula told Global Citizen. “We only have today, and it's possible to act on climate change, hunger, and poverty, and update our financial systems to build the world that we want, with peace and without hunger.”

This is huge because Brazil, as home to the Amazon rainforest — a.k.a. “the lungs of our planet” — is an important stakeholder in the climate conversation and President Lula, at the G7 summit in Japan, recently called on the world leaders of wealthy nations to deliver the $100 billion annual climate finance they promised back in 2009, and to honor the promises they made in the Paris Climate Agreement.

"At COPs meetings, people always say they're going to donate $100 billion a year to developing countries so that they may preserve nature," he said in May. "We're still waiting for this to happen." 

Joining President Lula is Mia Mottley, Prime Minister of Barbados and co-chair of the Power Our Planet campaign, who has become world renowned for her calls to world leaders to prioritize the reform of global finance systems to reflect the current realities of the climate crisis on developing countries. 

“Our people are watching, and our people are taking note,” Barbados Prime Minister Mia Mottley said at COP26, held in Scotland in 2021. “Are we really going to leave... without the commitment to ambition that is sorely needed to save lives and to save our planet? Or are we so blinded and hardened that we can no longer appreciate the cries of humanity?”

Mottley is spearheading a potentially groundbreaking solution — The Bridgetown Initiative — to address the growing issue of climate finance. The idea is to shake up the status quo and completely reform much of how development finance has worked in the past and is backed by French President Emmanuel Macron, who is chairing the New Global Financial Pact Summit on June 22 and 23 in Paris, also calling on world leaders to commit to reimagining our financial systems to meet the moment.

President Lula and Prime Minister Mottley will also be joined at Power Our Planet: Live in Paris by world leaders including President of Kenya, William Ruto; President of the World Bank, Ajay Banga; President of the Rockefeller Foundation, Rajiv Shah; and Director General of the World Health Organization, Dr. Tedros Ghebreyesus. 

You can join President Lula and Prime Minister Mia Mottley and call on the World Bank, world leaders, philanthropists, and corporate leaders to step up now and make transformational changes to how the world’s financial system operates to tackle the mounting climate and debt crises. 

Global Citizens, artists, and activists everywhere can do this right now by taking action right now to support our Power Our Planet campaign — find out more about the campaign and the actions you can take to join the call. We all have a part to play to Power Our Planet, quicken our transition to clean energy, and strengthen our systems to combat climate change and address poverty.

Power Our Planet: Live in Paris will also feature performances from Lenny Kravitz, Billie Eilish, H.E.R., and Jon Batiste, with special guests FINNEAS, Mosimann, Ayra Starr, and Joé Dwèt Filé, as well as appearances by John Boyega, Rémy Buisine, Common, Connie Britton, Sabrina Dhowre Elba, Cyril Dion, Danai Gurira, Diane Kruger, Padma Lakshmi, Aïssa Maïga, Berla Mundi, Norman Reedus, and Michelle Yeoh; alongside some of the world’s leading youth climate activists, including Xiye Bastida, Camille Etienne, Jerome Foster II, Brianna Fruean, Helena Gualinga, Elizabeth Wathuti, Wawa Gautheru, and Mitzi Jonelle Tan.

Power Our Planet: Live in Paris is part of Global Citizen’s year-long Power Our Planet campaign. The goal of the campaign is to galvanize millions of people around the world to take action, raise their voices, and call on these leaders to make commitments to keep the financing promises that have already been made, unlock critical funding, invest in the green transition to keep global warming below 1.5 degrees, and increase support for the poorest countries to address the fight against poverty and inequality.