November 7, 2022

10:11

Gabriel Abreu – From Amazon Agency

MANAUS – The Climate Observatory released this Sunday, 6, a position paper with its expectations for the 27th Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (COP27), in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt. In the document, the network of 37 Brazilian civil society organizations defends zero deforestation, the disintrusion of indigenous lands, and the fight against environmental crimes as priorities for Brazil in the event.

The climate COP is an annual meeting of delegates (representatives) from almost every country on the planet to negotiate global goals to combat climate change and present each country’s plans to contribute to these goals and report on their progress.

The executive secretary of the Climate Observatory, Márcio Astrini, defended that, at this moment, Brazil needs to commit to two fundamental axes, at the event, which are the withdrawal of invaders from indigenous lands, since they are putting the lives of native peoples at risk, and the reconstruction of environmental agencies in fighting crimes.

“The first is the indigenous issue, the government needs to, immediately, make a task force for the disintrusion of the indigenous lands, get the invaders out of there, and guarantee the right of these populations to survive even. The invaders are putting these indigenous populations under risk and threat, they are being killed, they are being victims of violence. So, there is nothing more important than to do the disintrusion of indigenous areas”, said Astrini.

Astrini also highlighted that the second issue, which is of great importance, is that the country must rebuild the capacity of the Brazilian State to fight environmental crimes with the inspection agencies, agencies with police power in the environmental area, which also includes the Federal Police department, in agreement with the state police, undone in the Bolsonaro Government.

“The inspectors received a series of decrees and small measures that prevent and intimidate them from doing their work. The budget has been decreasing and field operations have all been cancelled. The Amazon Fund, which used to finance Ibama’s operations, is frozen until now. So, rebuilding the capacity of these agencies, financially, giving them more freedom to interact in the field, is essential, because this is the only way we will be able to gradually reduce the number of deforestation in the Amazon”, stated the executive secretary.

Signaling

The Climate Observatory also highlighted, in the document, that the new government of Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva (PT), which begins in 2023, needs to signal, at the event, several points, among which we highlight: the commitment with new Nationally Determined Contributions, without footsteps,
compatible with 1.5°C, the temperature objective for the world, and with the best science; and the reaffirmation of the commitment with zero deforestation, as the president had already promised in his victory speech on the 30th.

The reactivation of the PPCDAm (Plan for Prevention and Control of Deforestation in the Amazon) and of the PPCerrado (Plan for Prevention and Control of Deforestation in the Cerrado), with the restitution of the competencies and institutional conditions of the bodies responsible for environmental supervision (Ibama and ICMBio), which will unblock the Amazon Fund in the first month of the government, and which actively supports the developing countries’ request for a financing mechanism for losses and damages.

COP27 needs to advance in crucial agendas left open in Glasgow, such as climate finance, loss and damage, and the acceleration of the ambition of countries’ emission cut targets. The world has only 96 months to cut emissions by 43% and give the 1.5°C a chance.

Regression

Today, Brazil, along with Mexico, is the only G20 country to regress in the ambition of its target, giving itself permission to emit, in 2030, 73 million tons of CO2 more than in the original NDC of 2015. Still without the presidential pen in hand, Lula cannot propose a new NDC, but he can say how he intends to increase the country’s ambition.

“The president-elect’s speech at the COP is highly anticipated. Lula will hardly have the power to change the reality of the insufficiency of the NDCs around the world. But, at a moment when the European leadership is undermined by the war and the American leadership oscillates due to the elections, it will be important to have Brazil pointing the way to ambition, especially for the emerging countries”, said Stela Herschmann, specialist in Climate Policy at the OC.

This will be the first time that a Brazilian president-elect goes to a COP. In 2009, Lula became the first Brazilian president to go to a Climate Conference in Copenhagen, where he gave a speech that received a standing ovation from the delegates. The speech was not enough to save the conference, which sank because of disagreements between China and the US.

After 2009, Dilma Rousseff spoke in Paris in 2015 at the leaders’ summit that opened the COP. Since then, Brazil has dropped out of the picture. In 2018, one of Bolsonaro’s first moves as president-elect was to cancel Brazil’s offer to host COP25, which ended up going to Chile. In the same year, he threatened to pull out of the Paris Agreement – one of his aides, Nabhan Garcia, declared that the climate treaty served only “to wipe his ass”.

Last year in Glasgow, Bolsonaro was invited to the leaders’ summit, but preferred to stay in Italy to fraternize with neo-fascists. The only Brazilian speech at the opening of COP26 was that of activist Txai Suruí, who criticized the Brazilian government – and was subsequently assaulted by an official from the Ministry of Environment.

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