Climate Change, Environment, Headlines, Latin America & the Caribbean

CLIMATE CHANGE: Brazil to Recover Leadership Role with CO2 Limits

Mario Osava

RIO DE JANEIRO, Nov 17 2009 (IPS) - Brazil’s decision to adopt voluntary reduction targets for greenhouse gas emissions is an indication that the planet’s climate change emergency has joined strategic, economic and ideological issues as a new factor on the global political agenda.

At the World Climate Change Conference to be held Dec. 7-18 in Copenhagen, the Brazilian government will table its commitment to cut its greenhouse gas emissions by between 36.1 percent and 38.9 percent of their business-as-usual levels by 2020, with GDP growth of between five and six percent a year, respectively.

Environmentalists expressed doubts about the effectiveness and precision of these figures, which are based on future projections. But the consensus is that it is an important step and a complete change of attitude for Brazil, which until recently was reluctant to adopt any quantitative commitments on emissions.

This decision “distances Brazil from the doctrine of the Group of 77 (G77),” a coalition of more than 130 developing countries in international negotiations, according to Eduardo Viola, professor of international relations at the University of Brasilia, who is interested in how the geopolitical map is changed by environmental issues.

With this step, Brazil has aligned itself more closely with the European Union and countries like Japan, Australia and South Korea, that have adopted specific emission targets, and moved away from a group of emerging nations, like China and India, which are large emitters of carbon dioxide (CO2), the main greenhouse gas, but resist setting binding limits on their emissions.

Brazil is thus strengthening its leadership role in the negotiations, at the cost of shifting away from old allies, Viola said.

Brazil’s was a strong voice at climate negotiations in the 1990s that led to the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change and the Kyoto Protocol, under which industrialised countries committed to CO2 emissions 5.2 percent lower in 2012 than in 1990.

At that time, Brazil was influential in establishing the principle of “common but differentiated responsibilities,” on the basis of which binding targets were set for industrialised countries, and the Clean Development Mechanism was created to benefit projects that reduced emissions in poor countries.

But the urgency indicated by the results of scientific studies on climate change, and the strong growth of emerging economies like China, India and Brazil, have weakened the North-South focus of the debate. International pressure has mounted for these countries, too, to make efforts to mitigate climate change.

The Brazilian decision to announce national emission targets a month ahead of the Copenhagen conference is “a historical turning point,” Viola told IPS. It was due to a “convergence of many factors,” chief among them the presidential pre-candidacy of former environment minister Marina Silva for the 2010 elections.

Public opinion and a large proportion of industrialists are also in favour of a low-carbon economy, in line with this national commitment, and Environment Minister Carlos Minc ably seized on this opportunity, Viola said.

Silva resigned from the ministry last year and returned to her seat in the senate because she felt President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva had failed to support her. She announced in August that she was leaving the governing Workers’ Party (PT), and joined the Green Party (PV), a hint that she may run for president, although she has not explicitly said so.

The prospect of a Green candidate highlighted the importance of environmental issues, especially climate change. Dilma Rousseff, Lula’s chief of staff, and his favourite to succeed him, is known for promoting infrastructure and energy projects to the detriment of the environment. Suddenly, though, she has rallied to environmental causes.

It is Rousseff, not Minc, who will lead the Brazilian delegation to Copenhagen, another clear move to build her candidacy.

In any case, the decision announced Nov. 13 marks a triumph for the Environment Ministry over the “backward” positions of the Foreign Ministry, tied to its old coalitions, and the Science and Technology Ministry, which coordinates the national debate on climate change. Both were supported by Rousseff and Lula, Viola said.

Although the targets are based on future projections, they are a “positive” signal to the world, Rubens Born, the coordinator of Vitae Civilis, a Brazilian non-governmental organisation participating actively in negotiations on climate change, told IPS.

To be effective, however, these commitments should be formally enacted as a law or decree to make them binding on any future government, Born said. The Lula administration’s attitude is ambiguous: while it has made progress on climate change, it has also gone backward on the reform of the forest law, giving in to pressure from landowners who want to continue cutting down the jungle, he said.

A strategic plan with detailed measures is needed for carbon-intensive sectors like transport, which in Brazil is highly concentrated in road traffic, fuelled by petroleum derivatives, Viola said.

The emissions targets Brazil has announced imply a reduction by 2020 of between 975 and 1,052 million tonnes of CO2, out of a projected total for that year (based on current trends) of 2,703 million tonnes.

Two-thirds of that reduction is expected to come from curbing deforestation, which is to be cut by 80 percent in the Amazon, and by 40 percent in the Cerrado, the vast savannah in central Brazil. These projected cuts are based on the 1996-2005 average annual rate of clearance.

But in agriculture, energy and steel, the other sectors for which targets were set, there will actually be no reduction at all. Annual CO2 emissions in 11 years’ time will be 400 million tonnes higher than they are now, according to estimates by Friends of the Earth/Brazilian Amazon.

The reductions mentioned in the announcement are the difference between the projected level of 700 million tonnes of CO2 emissions from those sectors in 2020, and the planned – lower – increase in emissions.

Environmentalists complain that, apart from the reduction in deforestation, the targets are not ambitious enough. For farming, for instance, the emissions cuts are only 4.9 to 6.1 percent, and are to come mainly from recovering degraded pasture lands.