Statement from the Global Foundation
Our Carajás Roundtable in the Amazon delivers on hopes and expectations, in a moment of remarkable global convergence on care for our common home.
The Global Foundation convened its most significant global roundtable meeting for the year in Carajás, in the Amazon region of Brazil, from 13 to 15 August, 2025. It was hosted by Gustavo Pimenta, CEO of Brazilian mining company Vale, also a Key Partner of the Foundation. Vale operates the largest iron ore mine in the world at Carajás, where it also preserves and restores the Amazon forest at a very large and impressive scale. The roundtable was convened in partnership with CEBRI, Brazil’s principal international relations think tank. Over three full days, the Roundtable brought together 50 leaders from Brazil and from across the world, from business, civil society, institutions and governments, to discuss the progress and likely outcomes from Brazil’s hosting of the United Nations annual climate change meeting (COP30) this November and to integrate Brazil’s efforts into the world, including through the continuing Global Project of the Global Foundation, ‘Shaping Global Governance, for Climate and Nature’.
The Global Foundation participants in the Roundtable were: from our leadership group, Sharan Burrow, AC, Co-Chair of our Global Project and global advocate for a fair and just transition, and Steve Howard, Secretary General; also senior figures from global business, including Olivier Bahabanian, Country Chair, Brazil, Total Energies, which is also a Key Partner of the Foundation; senior diplomats, including HE Sophie Davies, Australian Ambassador to Brazil and HE Delia Albert, Former Foreign Secretary of the Philippines; representatives of global institutions, including the United Nations, the International Labour Organisation, the World Trade Organisation and the International Chamber of Commerce; representatives of global faith-based organisations and of the World Benchmarking Alliance.
Key documents from the Roundtable may be accessed as follows: Vale’s Media Release, CEBRI’s Highlights, Steve Howard’s Opening Remarks, Gallery, Program, Participant list, Speaker Biographies
This statement reflects the views of the Global Foundation. It will be expanded into a more comprehensive report which will be widely circulated.
Four hopes and expectations realised
At the closing session of the Carajás Roundtable on 15 August, Global Foundation Secretary General, Steve Howard, revisited the four hopes and expectations for the meeting that he had outlined in his opening address on day one. Here are those four points and Steve’s conclusions, including direct quotes:
Expectation 1. ‘That this meeting will help Brazil’s plans for COP30, particularly with a view to outcomes and implementation, and a leading role for business, in partnership with civil society, working alongside government and international processes’
‘What a fantastic success this roundtable meeting has been! We have witnessed in these past days, the strong evidence of the private and public sectors working together, to achieve major practical legacies for Brazil as well as for the planet, that will flow from hosting the COP meeting in November.
Specifically, here in Carajás, we have seen the outstanding leadership of Vale in ensuring that business and the environment can be fully complementary and not in conflict. We need exactly this kind of enlightened business leadership and partnership for the sake of the future of our planet.
We’ve enjoyed open and frank discussions about the role of the mining industry in accelerating the energy transition, through decarbonisation. Significantly, the discussions highlighted the role of the private sector as a whole in delivering solutions for climate action and scaling-up nature positive outcomes. Of particular interest were multiple initiatives already underway and in prospect for forest conservation and preservation at both national and global scale. It was wonderful to better understand the role that the Amazon can and does play in stimulating bio-economic outcomes that also serve a just transition for local populations.’
Expectation 2. ‘That this meeting will act as a further bridge to help elevate understanding and regard for Brazil in the world’
‘No more condescension from the global North to the global South! Brazil has emerged on the world stage and will deliver a brilliant COP with lasting impact in Brazil and globally. No more ‘Stray Dog Complex’,1 Brazil! You have shaken off your national inferiority complex, with very good reason!
We will look back on this time as a tipping point for Brazil and it’s also a tipping point for the global South and for the world as a whole.’
Expectation 3. ‘That this meeting will help to bring about Brazil’s own further global engagement, from business, civil society and government, working globally with and through the Global Foundation and our global network.
‘The Global Foundation welcomes the Brazil-to-global partnerships we are entering into, with Sustainable Business COP, now embracing 67 peak national business organisations; with CEBRI, Brazil’s leading international relations think tank, with growing affiliations across the globe; with the Government of Brazil which requested our advocacy on major global initiatives, such as the Tropical Forests Forever Facility, to help save tropical forests worldwide; and, of course, our Key Partner and host, Vale, with whom we already have deep and expanding relations.’
A Global Alliance within our ‘Elastic Band’
We are building pathways that will help strengthen global governance and foster concrete outcomes.
‘Our Global Project now becomes a Global Alliance. If you are not already involved, as many of you are, then join us. You will have to make a commitment to act in concert, to work within the ‘elastic band’, which was tested on some issues over these past days. However we dealt with it, as a family. We stretched the elastic and it held, and we are moving on, to make progress, with clarity, dialogue and openness and to contribute to global governance for climate and nature, together.’
‘Our network of Global Partners and Allies, who are committed to work together, through the Foundation, in the service of the common good, is expanding. If you would like to be involved, then be in touch. You will be engaging with enlightened business leaders who sustain us, as our Key Partners and Partners, with outstanding talents from civil society and with governments and institutions that all choose to work together, and with us.‘
Expectation 4. ‘That this meeting will act as a bridge to COP 31 – which we are hopeful will be hosted by Australia AND the Pacific Islands – ‘from the Amazon to Oceania’, the symbolism of which is overwhelmingly powerful.’
‘We are hopeful that COP31 will be hosted by Australia AND the Pacific Islands, in a bridge of continuity from the new model of COP, which Brazil has created. The Pacific is the key – their feet are in the rising waters. Sharan Burrow coined the phrase, ‘from the Amazon to Oceania’, around the global South. This symbolism is overwhelmingly powerful.
We need to listen to the voices from the ‘peripheries’, to the wisdom that comes from indigenous peoples, who can guide us about the care of nature and of our planet2.
The Australian Government should elevate the importance of the Pacific hosting and also talk to friends in Türkiye (which also wants to host COP31), to say, “what could we do to make you happy for the COP to go the Pacific and to Australia next year?”’
‘Climate change is not a problem of the future, but a crisis of the present’.2
Maina, from Tuvalu, Pacific Islands
2. ‘An Urgent Call: Laudato Si’ and indigenous wisdom in Oceania’
– Sister Adele Howard rsm
Call to action
In closing, Steve Howard urged all participants to carry forward the impetus from the Carajás Roundtable to COP30 in Belem, Brazil in November and beyond, globally, including through the ongoing Global Alliance work of the Global Foundation.
This will include the intention to further enlist global leaders, including the ‘Pope of the Amazon’, Pope Leo XIV and other faith leaders.
Finally, Steve expressed the sincere thanks of all to the generous and gracious hosts of the Carajás Roundtable, led by Vale CEO, Gustavo Pimenta and colleagues; also to the Chairman and Executive of Brazilian partner organisation, CEBRI; and to Sharan Burrow AC for her global advocacy, as well as to the Global Foundation team.
Related reading
- The suggestion of a “self-flagellating impulse” was first presented by Brazilian playwright Nelson Rodrigues, who called it the complexo de vira-lata, or stray-dog complex. Rodrigues coined the term after the 1950 World Cup, which was held in Brazil and ended in the country’s devastating loss to Uruguay in the finals. Rodrigues wrote that this complex is “the inferiority in which Brazilians voluntarily place themselves in front of the rest of the world. – Source: Wikipedia ↩︎
- ‘An Urgent Call: Laudato Si’ and indigenous wisdom in Oceania’ – Sister Adele Howard rsm ↩︎