COP28: Brazilian stands have coffee and even a band about climate – 12/05/2023 – Environment

“IPCC cries/ The fossil lobby won/ We’re going to boil/ You warned me well/ You warned me well.” It was with these simple lyrics dedicated to the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, sung over the chords of “Just a Perfect Day”, by Lou Reed, that the band Eventos Estremos performed in the early evening of this Tuesday (5). in the Brazilian pavilion at COP28, in Dubai.

Although designed essentially to host lectures, debates, panels and meetings on global warming, the Brazilian pavilion at Expo City in Dubai, in the United Arab Emirates, seeks to bring some lightness to visitors.

With two auditoriums and six meeting rooms, the 410 m2 space^two it has received around a thousand people a day, according to Jorge Viana, president of Apex (Brazilian Export and Investment Promotion Agency).

“This time, we brought together the government, civil society, the productive sectors and startups in a single environment. And with the ambiance it was a light space,” he told Sheet this Tuesday. During the Bolsonaro (PL) government, civil society set up its own stand at the COPs, which was retired this year.

In addition to plants scattered around the place, the ambiance can be seen on visitors’ wrists. Five thousand Senhor do Bonfim ribbons were brought from Bahia, and the pavilion team instructs foreigners to tie three knots and make a wish with each bow.

And if coffee is served in practically all pavilions, in Brazil, the product is local. “We are the only country in which the organization allowed the import of coffee for COP28”, says Viana, who had help from the Ministry of the Environment and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs to obtain the space.

In fact, there are those who feel at home. On Monday, some Brazilians even spread their sarongs under the Arabian palm trees that surround the pavilion. But security intervened and put an end to the party.

But the pavilion really works for more serious things. There have already been 70 panels and there will be 50 more by the end of COP28, on December 12th. And 240 meetings were held until this Tuesday.

Created in 2015, Eventos Estremos only talks about the hardships of civilization under the pressure of global warming, with songs in English or Portuguese, such as “Liberate Carbon” or “Sou Negacionista (Não Insista)”.

And they understand the subject: the band is made up of guitarists Claudio Angelo, international policy coordinator at the Climate Observatory, and Ricardo Baitelo, project coordinator at Iema (Environmental Energy Institute), and journalist and drummer Gustavo Faleiros — who did not travel to the COP and was replaced at the last minute by another climate specialist who also understood percussion.

Watch an excerpt from the show below:

It was not only in Brazil’s official pavilion that COP negotiators were able to listen to Brazilian music. Fafá de Belém sang this Tuesday at the Consórcio Amazônia Legal Pavilion, a 100 m space^two so that the nine Amazonian states can present programs and raise funds.

There, in total there will be 60 panels and 100 to 140 bilateral meetings. As determined by Sheetthe cost of the pavilion was around R$4 million.

The third pavilion related to Brazil at Expo City is exclusive to the CNI (National Confederation of Industry). For the first time with its own space in the conference’s so-called Blue Zone, the entity received around more than a hundred businesspeople at its inauguration, as well as governors, ministers, senators and deputies, especially from the Northeast and North regions — the current president of the CNI, Ricardo Alban , he’s from Bahia.

The body takes advantage of COP28 to launch a series of studies, such as the one that shows that a plan to decarbonize the industrial sector by 2050 will cost around R$40 billion. Others deal with the actions of businesspeople in times of climate responsibility or the Brazilian offshore wind potential.

Before canceling its participation in COP28, Braskem participated in two panels at the CNI pavilion, on “the importance of preparing an emissions inventory” as a tool to “increase the competitiveness of organizations” and on “the strategic relevance of the circular economy for emissions mitigation”.

In the Brazilian pavilion, the mining company —which is now facing the possibility of houses collapsing in Maceió— had two events scheduled: “The role of industry in the carbon-neutral circular economy” and “Impacts of climate change and the need to adapt industry”.