The Brazil Pavilion at Expo 2020 Dubai proved highly popular with visitors. A vast white canopy hung like a great cloud over a cool expanse of shallow water, representing the rivers, streams, swamps and floodplains of the Amazonian basin.
Under an Arabian Sun and surrounded by the sands of Dubai, visitors could slip off their shoes and feel the entrancing coolness of the water. Watching depictions of mangroves and Amazonian waterlilies, they were transported to the heart of Brazil’s unparalleled natural inheritance: home to the green lungs of our planet and some of its most important freshwater arteries.
Waterways have always united people, spreading ideas and innovation as well as goods. Dubai itself sits at the heart of one of the world’s greatest seafaring and trading routes. During Expo 2020, for a moment, these watercourses overlapped, symbolising the many affinities between Brazil and the UAE and the rising tide in our relationship.
Those tides rose to new heights this week during a visit by Sheikh Khaled bin Mohamed, Crown Prince of Abu Dhabi, to Brazil, to mark 50 years of our bilateral relationship, to represent the UAE at the G20 Summit, and to usher in a new chapter in our partnership.
As a dynamic trading nation and one of the most open societies in the world, we Emiratis have always believed that our nation is enriched by diversity. In diplomatic and economic relationships, partner countries benefit from all that makes us different as well as the ways in which we resemble each other.
Brazil-UAE relations are a case in point. Brazil is over 100 times larger than the Emirates, while its population is more than 20 times the size of our own. We differ vastly in climate, geography and history. Yet, like two rivers merging, we share a confluence of interests and complementary strengths. We each retain our distinct identities, but together we generate opportunity for our peoples and work towards a more stable and equitable world.
Few bilateral relationships have run so deep and wide so quickly. Brazil opened its embassy in Abu Dhabi in 1978. The first significant economic agreement between our countries was signed as recently as 1988. Yet today the UAE – with our world-leading financial, legal, transport and infrastructure systems – is the central trading hub for Brazil in Middle Eastern markets, and its second-largest Middle Eastern trading partner.
We exchanged more than $4 billion in non-oil bilateral trade in 2022. Last year, the UAE ranked as the 28th-largest destination for Brazilian products. By the first half of this year, it rocketed to 13th position, buoyed by a 74 per cent increase in Brazilian exports to the Emirati market. At least 40 Brazilian companies now operate in the UAE, and the number of Brazilian visitors to our shores is soaring.
Other links are less easily measured but no less strong, since they live in our respective imaginations. I have a childhood memory of my father, who used to play as goalkeeper in the UAE football team, cheering our national squad to the rafters as it was led to its first World Cup in 1990 by a Brazilian coach – Carlos Alberto Parreira. More recently, Brazil’s national day at Expo was an immersive, colour-drenched celebration of the country’s music, food and dance. Overflowing the pavilion, it brightened every corner of the Expo site, reflecting the warmth of our cultural connection.
For all these reasons and more, when we look to the future, we see a partnership brimming with potential. In many of the areas of the greatest importance to the future of the world, the UAE ranks Brazil as a priority partner, from trade to space exploration and green technology and AI.
Both our nations are situated at the crossroads of our regions, and act as gateways of investment, trade and cultural exchange as well as vibrant hubs of tourism. We are ambitious for the potential of a UAE-Mercosur Free Trade Agreement, which holds the potential to eliminate or reduce customs tariffs and other trade barriers while facilitating the flow of investments and services.
At the international level, our countries are committed to multilateralism and development and prosperity for all countries and peoples. We work side by side as members of the Brics, the group of the world’s leading emerging market economies. We are allies, too, in the fight against hunger, poverty and inequality, which Brazil has put at the heart of its important G20 agenda.
Both our peoples have a strong connection to the land and to traditional knowledge and practices. Both believe in the importance of the expertise and values of indigenous peoples in achieving sustainable development and protecting biodiversity. We share a common appreciation of the need for urgent international action against climate change, which our citizens feel directly, whether in Brazil’s drying Amazon rivers or the extreme heatwaves and storms increasingly afflicting the UAE and our neighbours. Accordingly, both our countries advocate climate finance and policies that support local and indigenous communities, women and youth.
When the UAE hosted Cop28 almost exactly a year ago, we were proud that the indigenous peoples of Brazil came to share their wisdom. They were not only part of the largest presence of indigenous peoples in the entire history of the Cops but, as representatives of their peoples and communities, took part in debate and in dialogue with the negotiators. We look forward to participating fully in Cop30 in Belem next year, at the gateway to the Amazon itself.
The stream of eager visitors to the Brazil Pavilion at Expo 2020 – and the flow of travellers and traders moving between our two countries since then – are proof of the new channels that open up when contrasting perspectives, traditions and cultures combine in new ways, as they do in our relationship. As water flows, so minds meet, when there are common interests and opportunities to be seized.
The future of global security and prosperity relies on a shared commitment to achieving stability and development for all, and strong co-operation on the international level. For the UAE, Brazil is, and will remain, one such valuable – and valued – partner.
