Brazil has a last chance against the climate crisis – 07/11/2023 – Ilona Szabó de Carvalho

Faced with the climate emergency we are experiencing, we can have different attitudes. If, on the one hand, it is true that low- and middle-income countries have the right to seek paths for their development, on the other hand, their choices from now on must be compatible with the targets for reducing greenhouse gas emissions, protection of biodiversity and towards circular economy models. As I’ve already written, this is not a zero-sum game, but a great, ultimate opportunity.

To this end, developing countries need to take advantage of the opportunities that present themselves with wisdom and correct ambition. This requires taking a leading role — proposing and demanding multilateral agreements and forms of financing that can help them achieve the Sustainable Development Goals, a just climate transition, and another level of competitiveness, productivity and income.

And Brazil can be a leader in these processes, use its influence over the G77 —a coalition of 134 developing nations— to leverage the many leaps it needs to take and even bring many other countries along. However, if we take the wrong path, it would be a disaster for everyone.

In this sense, green power Brazil needs to define and communicate its ecological ambition in a coherent way. This means presenting a concrete plan that includes goals, timelines and aligned strategies for reducing deforestation, phasing out fossil fuels, and transitioning to low-carbon agriculture.

And that also details the incentives and regulations for renewable energies, circular reindustrialization and green infrastructure and for the creation of new ecosystems of highly complex sustainable enterprises, whether in the bioeconomy, biotechnology or in the market of environmental services.

For Brazil to achieve emissions neutrality by 2050 and realize its potential as a global leader in the green economy, it will need to advance across all sectors—without clinging to the past or the status quo. It will have to decide what it wants: to be a vanguard country that has concluded an integral and coherent transition, which stands out in the production and export of green products with high added value, or the last great ‘dirty’ economy, which supplies inputs for the small demand remnant of the old economy at the expense of its natural resources and biodiversity, and of increasingly intense social conflicts. They are very different scenarios.

Without boldness and big dreams, the status quo tends to win. We would then be doomed to perpetuate the old “international division of labor”, providing commodities, to enhance the generation of wealth and climate transition, of nations that chose to seize new opportunities and think about the next generations.

Therefore, the Federal Government’s Ecological Transition Plan is our chance to catch the last train towards the club of high-income countries on the planet. It is true that we do not have the financial resources that the US and Europe used to draw up their ambitious and transformative plans, the Inflation Reduction Act, and the New European Green Deal respectively.

But if we choose to be part of the future, we have the ballast to leverage new forms of financing and fair agreements to face our great challenges. Agreements signed by Indonesia and South Africa can serve as inspiration.

Paradoxically, we have an abundance of the natural resources the world needs to preserve, such as forests, and those needed for the world to transit, including strategic minerals and rare earths—which demands a lot of responsibility and informed decision-making.

May we recover the ability to dream and lead by example.

PRESENT LINK: Did you like this text? Subscriber can release five free hits of any link per day. Just click the blue F below.