Brazil, Alarmed, Reconsiders Policy on Climate Change
MANAUS, Brazil - Alarmed at recent indications of climate change here in the Amazon and in other regions of Brazil, the government of President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva has begun showing signs of new flexibility in the tangled, politically volatile international negotiations to limit human-caused global warming.
The factors behind the re-evaluation range from a drought here in the Amazon rain forest, the world’s largest, and the impact that it could have on agriculture if it recurs, to new phenomena like a hurricane in the south of Brazil. As a result, environmental advocates, scientists and some politicians say, Brazilian policy makers and the public they serve are increasingly seeing climate change not as a distant problem, but as one that could affect them too. 
Brazil remains suspicious of foreign involvement in its management of the Amazon, which it views as a domestic matter. But negotiators and others who monitor international climate talks say Brazil is now willing to discuss issues that until recently it considered off the table, including market-based programs to curb the carbon emissions that result from massive deforestation in the Amazon, in which areas the size of New Jersey or larger are razed each year.
“I think things have advanced, certainly, compared to three years ago, when the government simply refused to discuss deforestation in international forums,” said Márcio Santilli, a former government official who helped start the Socio-Environmental Institute, an environmental group in Brasília. “There has been a change of posture which reflects the worries of Brazilian public opinion on this issue, which in turn puts pressure on politicians.”
For years, Brazil’s position in international climate change talks has been that Northern Hemisphere industrial countries must shoulder the burden of reducing greenhouse gas emissions. Fearing a loss of sovereignty, it has resisted plans to create market mechanisms to provide payments for reductions in deforestation and carbon emissions, accompanied by international monitoring.
Brazil’s stance on such issues is vitally important because by most calculations it is the fourth-largest producer of the greenhouse gases that most scientists believe are the principal cause of global warming. Three-quarters of those emissions result from deforestation, the overwhelming bulk of which occurs here.
The government’s new, slightly more nuanced position is not a result of a sudden burst of green awareness on the part of Mr. da Silva, whose knowledge of the technical details of the debate is widely described as sketchy. And in public, Mr. da Silva continues to want to shift the blame northward.
“Everyone knows that the rich countries are responsible for 60 percent of the gas emissions, and therefore need to assume their responsibilities,” he said during a meeting of the Group of 8 in June. “We don’t accept the idea that the emerging nations are the ones who have to make sacrifices, because poverty itself is already a sacrifice.”
A number of recent events have led political leaders and ordinary Brazilians to conclude that they are not immune to climate change. First and foremost was a disastrous 2005 drought in the Amazon that killed crops, kindled forest fires, dried up transportation routes, caused disease and wreaked economic havoc.
Brazil sees itself as an emerging agricultural and industrial power, and global warming could have a disastrous impact on those aspirations. Scientists note that Brazil’s southern breadbasket flourishes largely because of rainfall patterns in the Amazon that are likely to be altered if droughts recur or climate change accelerates.
“Once they really register that the Amazon rain machine is very important to the south of Brazil, they are going to be much more interested in avoiding deforestation,” said Thomas Lovejoy, president of the Heinz Center for Science, Economics and the Environment. “You don’t have to be interested in biodiversity to want rain to keep that amazing agricultural system going.”
Brazil also envisions constructing a large network of dams throughout the Amazon over the next several decades to supply electricity to its industrial heartland in São Paulo, 2,000 miles south of here. But those plans depend on water flows in the region’s vast rivers not drying up.
“If rainfall is reduced, as many projections show, either you are not going to have enough water at all or you will have to have much bigger lakes to fill the dams,” said Paulo Moutinho, scientific coordinator at the Amazon Institute for Environmental Research.
In addition, in 2004 a hurricane formed in the South Atlantic for the first time since weather records began being kept. The storm came ashore in the southern Brazilian state of Santa Catarina, which was not prepared for it, and destroyed houses and forced thousands to flee.
“There was no previous registry of this happening, not even in the literature of colonial times,” said Carlos Nobre, Brazil’s most prominent climate scientist, who works at the National Institute for Space Research.
The latest report of the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, issued in April, has added to concerns here. “By mid-century, increases in temperature and associated decreases in soil water are projected to lead to gradual replacement of tropical forest by savanna in eastern Amazonia,” it predicted, while also warning that “crop productivity is projected to decrease for even small local temperature increases” in tropical areas, “which would increase risk of hunger.”
Among climatologists who study the Amazon, the buzz words these days are “tipping point” - the moment at which damage to the environment is so severe and widespread that it pushes the ecosystem into an irreversible cycle of self-destruction.
Scientists disagree how close the Amazon is to such an event. Some warn that it is just a few years away, while others argue that the margin of safety is decades. But almost all agree that the danger exists.
“Obviously the uncertainty range is huge, but the momentum is pushing us in that direction, and the fact that it is close is important, because the process is like steering a big ship,” said Philip Fearnside, a researcher here at the National Institute for Amazon Research. “People on the Titanic saw the iceberg, but they couldn’t turn in time.”
In the debate over how to reduce carbon emissions and postpone or avoid such a tipping point, one area of disagreement between Brazil and the international community has been the issue of compensation for what is known as “avoided deforestation.” This approach sets a monetary value for greenhouse gas emissions and pays farmers and indigenous people not to raze the forest.
Brazil has been wary of allowing such a market mechanism, preferring that donations flow into a government fund that it would administer. Potential donors say they worry about waste and inefficiency and fear that such a fund would end up, as one person said, asking not to be identified because negotiations were still under way, being “money down a rathole, a total scam that did nothing at all for the people out there in the forest.”
In the absence of a clear direction at the federal level, governors of some Amazon states are moving on their own. In June, Eduardo Braga, governor of Amazonas, announced a new climate change law, the first in Brazil, that allowed compensation for “environmental services,” including payments to farmers and river dwellers for avoiding deforestation.
“This action would have raised big questions and objections just four months ago, but there’s been a big turnabout,” Mr. Braga said.
Mr. Braga’s initiative is especially important because his state, the biggest in Brazil, has largely avoided the devastation occurring in neighboring states to the east and south.
But in the end, how much and how rapidly policy shifts depends largely on Mr. da Silva, who has consistently argued that “the Amazon is not untouchable.” In April, he saw Al Gore’s film “An Inconvenient Truth” in Brasília in the company of some of Brazil’s leading environmentalists.
“My impression is that Lula’s intuitive sensitivity to the gravity of the situation is greater than that of those who surround him,” said Mr. Santilli, who was present at the screening. “I think he understands and accepts the idea of these differentiated instruments, but I don’t know if he realizes that the government’s position is contrary to this.”
Copyright 2007 The New York Times Company
If the glaciers in the Andes go away, as they are doing on the Western Andean slopes, how seriously will that impact the Amazon basin?
In any event, as long as the third world countries continue the attitude that they shouldn’t have to bear any responsibility for mitigating the problem of global climate change, the problem will never be sufficiently dealt with. Everybody is going to suffer. Doesn’t matter who’s responsible. What matters is that every country works towards mitigation.
More information: Mr. Santilli is a founder of Instituto Socioambiental
http://www.socioambiental.org/home_html
there is an english page. His organization has just launched an interactive map of the Amazon.On the lower right of the homepage is an english version of a 2006 report.
What the reporter does not mention is that the indigenous peoples are meeting all over the country and working with organizations to find ways for them to contribute knowledge and stabilize their lands in face of invaders, miners, illegal loggers etc.
The Brazilian Confederation of Bishops has been undertaking advocacy on behalf of a number of peoples through their CIMI branch
http://www.cimi.org.br/?system=news&eid=340
We are doomed.
Like it or not, Lula da Silva cannot and should not assert that the fate of Brazil’s rainforests is for Brazil to decide. Those rainforests (and those of Zaire, Indonesia, etc) are the lungs of the world; the more they are cut down, the hotter we all get (and the more irreplaceable biodiversity is lost). This is yet another reason why I am so furious about the way GWB & Cheney have squandered the US’s political capital…
As long as the Third World has THAT attitude? As long as THEY are unwilling to make sacrifices? How can anyone take that stance while living in the First World. Especially in the United States where we are not making ANY sacrifices and our administration is only barely willing to admit that there might be a problem! Perhaps if the First World took it seriously enough to act, or perhaps if we no longer allowed Amazonian beef into the country, the Third World wouldn’t jump to the conclusion that they were being asked to suffer for OUR future. There is a little history there, you realize. We’ve toppled regimes much like that of Hugo Chavez time and time again in order to preserve our comfort level in the United States. For those who live in the cess pool of our foreign policy, it is a little hard to take it when we say, “We’re all going to have to make sacrifices,” because our sacrifices tend to be the sacrifice of other human beings for our affluence. We have to look no further than Iraq. And, of course, forgotten in the horror of Iraq is the fact that we are really in Afghanistan because we want it to run a Chevron pipeline. Everyone now looks at Afghanistan as the “reasonable” part of our war on terror, but it isn’t any better than the one in Iraq and it has the same purpose.
If we want Brazil to sacrifice on the World’s behalf, than we had best set the example and start, immediately, on the sacrifice ourselves. I have a great idea. Let’s just donate a year’s military budget to rainforest preservation. Just one year. Maybe a country that didn’t spend itself dry on killing machines to dominate the world would have a SCRAP of moral authority with which to ASK for the help of the Third World. Until WE act, however, we should not DARE cast aspersions on the dedication of the Third World!
www.unknown-arts.org/politics
Moses, you took my thunder.
Moses, being a brazilian im astonished at how u cought our drift like that, good words.
Unless the USA, the largest emitter of carbon pollution, seriously undertakes the meaningful measures necessary to curtail our contribution to greenhouse gasses, the less industrialized & third world nations will have no incentives to control their emissions. This can never happen until Americans render ineffective the special interests and their supporting administrations that have prevented the necessary reforms through deception and fabricated science–albeit with the help of an apathetic populace and defaulting legislators. Contrary to their assertions, the measures to reduce carbon pollution can only improve our economy and security by reducing our oil imports while improving our health & quality of life.
Bobbi Dykema Katsanis’ post demonstrates the typical imperialistic assumptions of the “Left”.
first the assumption that US control over other peoples natural resources is preferable- is IMPERIALISTIC. this should need no further explination.
second the assumption that US political-capitial pre-Dubya worked for good is redicules.
For example the book Beyond Beef, connected US beef
consumption to Amazonian deforestation decades ago.
additionally US political-capital has been used to increase brazils
production of ethanol and export it to the US. this was
accomplished during bush’s trip to latin american this spring.
to assume that US political-capital, and by extension, control over
other countrys natural resources would somehow stop
deforestation not only ignores but reinforces the vary cause of that
deforestation. it is not the proclimations of unpopular politicians
in nations with limited institutional power in the global economy
that cause deforestation, but the growth imperative of global-
capitalism, and western imperialism.
instead of looking at the issue of deforestation as an “us/them” issue we should look at how we can help the landless peasents of Brazil replace large scale multi-national agro-business like ADM and Cargil, with sustainable co-opt’s. this is a movement that already exists and presents a clear alternative to the capitalist/imperialist ownership model. additionally we should opposse US imperialst policys (and our own imperialist inclinations) that are driving the destruction of the enviroment.
slave of power, while yes this is “true” China is now the largest emmitter. it has only been this way for a couple of months, so china’s been #1 for a month or two. the US was the world leader for decades. and lets not forget that US demand for cheap products is what has driven china’s growth and inturn their emmisions. So to say that China’s the #1 emmiter when their emmisions are directly tied to our consumption and standard of living, demonstrates the abserdity of looking at the issue of global warming in a nationalistic context. borders = bad.
All countries that consume fossil fuels should pay the Brazilian government an equivalent “Rain Forest Tax”. It would be in the interest of the Brazilian government to protect and expand the rain forest as an important world resource.
I guess this concept could be used during the aftermath of global warming.
Everyone knows that Brazil’s growing population of poor people look to the Amazon rainforest to solve their problems, or emigrate, while the World’s growing population looks to Brazil to supply them with rainforest products - but nobody wants to talk about family planning or they might offend the Catholic church. So, the destruction continues on toward the inevitable ecocide.
Get off your butts and Go on out into the Streets, even if you have never done it before, You will learn to love it, and the freedom it brings. The people have to see itself doing strange things like street protest to understand what is happening. We have been avoiding this for decades. It is time. All the other obvious stuff also is essential. But first make a PUBLIC statement. Trust me on this, I have tried it and can attest to its efficacy.