Marina says she is working on a plan for climate disasters – 01/16/2024 – Environment

Minister Marina Silva (Rede) stated that the Ministry of the Environment is working on a structuring plan to prevent climate disasters — such as the floods that, last weekend, left 12 people dead in Rio de Janeiro, the storm after which part of São Paulo was without electricity for six days, floods in the south of the country and drought in the Amazon.

“We are working on a structuring plan to deal with it in a preventive way, which is not easy because there is no model in the world yet”, he stated in an interview with Sheet. “We would be pioneers.”

Marina is in Davos as part of the Brazilian delegation at the annual meeting of the World Economic Forum. This Tuesday (16), she participated in two panels, in addition to bilateral meetings with figures such as Bill Gates, the founder of Microsoft, and Mathias Cormann, secretary general of the OECD (Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development). This Wednesday (17), she should join four more discussion tables.

“I think we are experiencing the pedagogy of pain all over the world, the pedagogy of horror, which is the worst there is. We’re losing 20,000 lives in Bangladesh because of the floods, we’re losing lives in Brazil because of of floods, we lose in terms of our economic heritage because of droughts and even our natural resources when there is a large fish mortality, as we had in the drought in the Amazon”, he stated.

“The only way to stop this is when society increasingly demands from companies and governments that they have public policies that are aimed at tackling the causes of what has generated extreme weather events.”

The minister stated that she is working with the ministers of Integration and Development, Waldez Góes, of Cities, Jader Barbalho Filho, and of Transport, Renan Filho, on an emergency action plan.

“We are already very advanced with the idea of ​​issuing a decree regarding the possibility that the more than a thousand municipalities that are vulnerable to extreme events could be considered permanently in calamity,” he stated, without giving further details.

The possibility of adopting a permanent state of emergency in cities at risk of climate disasters had already been raised by the minister last year, after the rains that devastated the north coast of São Paulo.

Marina says that her department is permanently inserted in this debate, but deals with prevention. “Obviously, the execution of drainage, the execution of slopes, the execution of population removal programs are not carried out by the ministry, but the ministry participates in this on a conceptual basis, in the processes of technological alternatives. All these efforts [estão na] our historic agenda”, he says.

She points out what she considers a deficit in global climate negotiations with regard to mitigation (cutting greenhouse gas emissions) and adaptation.

“The problem has already been identified, what is already happening, if we do 100% of our homework, according to scientists, it will still persist for the next 30 years. We will have to adapt — infrastructure, code of posture for cities and master plan, agricultural models, all logistics infrastructure.”

During the bilateral meetings, Marina talked about possible contributions to Brazil and was asked about what has been done by the government. In a meeting with Stefaan Decraene, executive president of Rabobank, the topic was the traceability of the cattle herd in the country — the financial institution is one of the major investors in Brazilian agriculture.

Asked whether investors had questioned the apparent contradiction between Brazil positioning itself as a stronghold of green energy and the country’s new investments in oil, defended by President Lula (PT) and Minister Alexandre Silveira (Mines and Energy), who also came to the Switzerland, the minister set the tone.

“Investors know that the contradiction is global. It will not exist anywhere in the world where this contradiction does not exist. Even Europe, for example, now in the context of the war, had to make an inflection in relation to the use of gas “, he stated. “We’re no longer talking about energy transition, we’re talking much more about energy security.”

She stressed that the decision is not hers or Silveira’s. “It’s President Lula, it’s the government strategy,” she said.

A panel on Brazil that brought together the three Brazilian ministers — in addition to the two mentioned, Nísia Trindade, from Health — attracted little interest, with almost half of the 88 seats vacant.

Marina also added that at the opening of COP28, the UN climate conference, which took place in 2023 in Dubai, Lula “said that countries, all of them, producers and consumers, have to get out of dependence on fossil fuel and accelerate each increasingly transition to a renewable energy matrix”.

“There is no country that is discussing making an abrupt break in its, say, energy systems. But it is necessary to face the issue of transition. And Brazil is doing that,” he stated.