Fernando Haddad

Brazilian Finance Minister Fernando Haddad is the force behind President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva’s mission to transform Latin America’s biggest country, which had previously lagged on environmental priorities, into a global climate leader. Haddad’s climate transformation plan aims to create millions of new green jobs and drive significant economic growth.

The goal is “to show that the planet is able to reconcile an ambitious sustainability agenda with an ambitious economic and productive agenda,” Haddad tells TIME. One such policy would slash the enormous Brazilian agricultural sector’s dependence on foreign fertilizer by investing in greener, domestic production. Another would drive growth in poorer regions by building solar capacity and transmission lines to places with little electricity.

Last December, Haddad introduced an extensive plan to guide this transition. Some of its key policies, such as issuing green bonds, would merely catch Brazil up with Latin American neighbors after four years of backsliding under former President Jair Bolsonaro. But others, like a bill inspired by the E.U.’s emissions trading scheme, would put Brazil among just a handful of developing countries at the forefront of green finance—and ahead of other major economies like the U.S. and Canada.

Haddad hopes to wield these ambitions, and an innovative fund that aims to raise $125 billion for tropical forests around the world, when Brazil hosts the G20 in November and the U.N.’s annual COP climate summit next year. “The message we want to send to the world,” says Haddad, “is that it’s impossible to face the climate challenge without looking at its intimate connection with international finance.”