Brazil Was a Global Leader on Climate Change. Now It's a Threat.

[Judi Lynn]

Jair Bolsonaro’s government could roll back decades of progress on clean energy and reducing deforestation.
BY LISA VISCIDI, NATE GRAHAM | JANUARY 4, 2019, 3:14 PM

This coming November, delegates from nearly every country had been scheduled to gather in Brazil to discuss climate change at the 25th United Nations Conference of the Parties. When the meeting was planned, Brazil seemed a logical choice to host it. Not anymore.

Brazil depends more on renewable energy sources (including biofuels) than any of the world’s other large energy consumers. And between 2005 and 2012, it also ran a successful campaign to reduce deforestation by about 80 percent. But the election of Jair Bolsonaro as Brazil’s president has thrown the country’s status as an environmental beacon into doubt.

In November 2018, Brazil withdrew its offer to host the climate conference, citing the government transition process and budgetary constraints. Bolsonaro, who took office Jan. 1, clearly believes that economic development is at odds with environmental protection and that considerations about the planet should not be allowed to inhibit industry, particularly Brazil’s huge agricultural sector. During the campaign Bolsonaro earned the support of Brazil’s agribusiness lobby, the ruralistas, which make up one of the country’s most powerful congressional blocs. While corporate campaign donations are illegal in Brazil, many wealthy ruralistas are able to self-fund their campaigns and get elected; as a result, they have become a powerful force in Congress, and Bolsonaro needs their backing.

The newly inaugurated president has grumbled that environmental policy is “suffocating” the economy. He has threatened to withdraw Brazil from the Paris agreement on climate change (although he recanted after an international backlash). His environment minister, Ricardo Salles, is a former legal director of the Brazilian Rural Society, an agricultural group, and was fined this past December for changing plans for an environmentally protected area to benefit businesses in the state of São Paulo when he was head of an environmental agency there. Bolsonaro has also promised to remove some protections for the Amazon rainforest, including by rolling back indigenous reserves, such as Raposa Serra do Sol—he has advocated for agriculture and mining exploration there and said the area is too large for its inhabitants. In one of his first acts as president he shifted the power to regulate and create indigenous reserves—which account for about 13 percent of Brazil’s territory, including vast swaths of rainforest—from the National Indian Foundation agency to the agriculture ministry. On the plus side, Bolsonaro does advocate expanding wind and solar energy and reducing dependence on coal and oil for power generation, but he has offered few details on how he plans to do so. He also supports ethanol incentives, popular with Brazil’s sugar cane lobby, but has expressed no plans to support other forms of clean transport.

More:
https://foreignpolicy.com/2019/01/04/brazil-was-a-global-leader-on-climate-change-now-its-a-threat/