By Jessica Kenny
Source: EngajaMundo. At Climate Justice March on November 13th, activists stand up for indigenous land rights and keeping fossil fuels in the ground.
The climate justice march that took place this Sunday, November 13th in Marrakech called for freezing new fossil fuel development and for ending "false solutions," such as biofuels. These demands, timed to kick-off the second week of negotiations in COP22, come from a broad cross-section of civil society representatives (including youth, researchers and indigenous peoples) from around the world calling to their governments with a clear message: the low-carbon transition must be both urgent and just.
In the past week at COP22, Brazil has expressed this sense of urgency, but not so much of justice. According to their lead negotiator José Antônio Marcondes de Carvalho, Brazil has shown that it takes the Paris Agreement seriously by taking a lead among developing countries in declaring an absolute and economy-wide Nationally Determined Contribution (NDC) and by pushing in these negotiations to re-open the CMA1 (Meeting of the Parties to the Paris Agreement) in 2017, instead of waiting until the facilitative dialogue of 2018. In a delegation meeting on Friday evening, Carvalho joked that he was met with indignant stares by fellow negotiators when he proposed that they keep working through Sunday – supposedly their day off to enjoy Morocco. That’s how serious he is about making sure that Marrakech really turns out to be the “implementation COP” that produces work plans to meet the goals of the Paris Agreement. Most importantly, Paris set a target to keep global temperature rise under 2 degrees celsius from pre-industrial levels and its parties committed to taking the mitigation and adaptation actions necessary to meet that goal together. While Brazil is still elaborating its National Strategy for meeting the NDC, Carvalho has placed great emphasis on the inauguration of the Biofuture Platform that occurred this Wednesday, November 16th, alongside Argentina, China, the United States, Morocco and several others, which is designed to launch “immediately scalable solutions to reduce carbon emissions in the transport sector” and move toward a circular green bioeconomy. The potential to reduce emissions by up to 90% compared to some fossil-based alternatives, and the ability to use “non-food” plant residues and waste as feedstock for energy production, make biofuels an alluring tool to meet mitigation with urgency.
However, as climate justice activists denounce, biofuels can easily become false solutions if governments are not careful to implement them in a socially just manner. From forced evictions during the 2016 Rio Olympics, to the constant violence between indigenous peoples and ranchers, Brazil does not have a promising record when it comes to land rights. Not to mention that in calculating the numbers of total emissions or square kilometers of deforestation, Brazil’s planners tend to miss the point: land is not just a commodity. When land is rezoned, sold and converted from Amazon rainforest to cattle pasture to a sugar cane field for biofuels, something is lost. When forest fires finally burn out, they’ve not only released carbon into the atmosphere, destroyed biodiversity, and diseased the lungs of local people – they’ve extinguished the deep historical ties between the land and its previous inhabitants. That loss cannot be quantified.
The point is not to sit back, without urgency, because that will do nothing to stop ongoing deforestation or deter the changing climate that is already affecting the most vulnerable populations first – in Brazil, they are indigenous peoples, small farmers and fishers. The point is that focusing on mitigation technologies, like biofuels, to meet the NDC is urgency without justice and should not be a placeholder for long-term climate justice measures like securing indigenous lands and implementing low carbon agriculture. Currently, Brazil proposes the Low Carbon Emission Agriculture (ABC) Program as its “main strategy for sustainable agriculture development,” which will include “restoring an additional 15 million hectares of degraded pastures by 2030 and enhancing 5 million hectares of integrated crop-livestock-forest systems (ICLFS) by 2030.” Yet last year, only about 2% of Brazil’s agricultural development budget was destined to the ABC Program. Both culture (meat eating and traditional cattle ranching) and money (Brazil’s economic recession) are limiting factors to implementing the ABC program, but so is political will.
The COP22 Brazil Pavilion, sponsored by APEX (the Brazilian Trade and Investment Promotion Agency), boasts a flashy campaign video “Be Brasil,” designed to attract foreign investments for low carbon agriculture, reforestation and renewable energy. One frame announces that Brazil is “ready to feed the world,” as a huge tractor dumps a load of soy beans – this is concerning at a time when parts of the country are undergoing severe water shortage. The video ends by announcing that Brazil is “competitive, creative, modern, sustainable, and open for investments.” The disturbingly neoliberal undertones evoking that Brazil is for sale, reflect the country’s recent strategy for austerity and export-based economic recovery under the leadership of interim president Michel Temer. Indeed, as developing country negotiators at the COP are vehemently defending, financial investments are needed from developed countries for developing countries to achieve their NDCs. But Brazil’s poor climate report card – emissions have increased even during a recession – suggests that heading in this direction of market-based climate action requires better governance, if real emissions cuts are to be achieved.
Better governance means having the political foresight and restraint to keep fossil fuels in the ground. This is no easy feat given that the shiny profits of fossil fuels are often tied with huge corruption scandals – like the case of Petrobrás Oil that led to President Dilma Roussef’s impeachment and kickstarted the country’s political mayhem. Last Saturday, November 12th, in a side event entitled “The Real Brazil Exposed,” Brazilian climate justice activists from the drought-ridden state of Ceará convened a panel to denounce the Brazilian government’s incoherence in passing a billion dollar subsidy for the coal industry, while denying basic access to water for the people of Ceará. According to climate geologist Alexandre Costa, the largest coal power plant in the state, whose dirty energy is sent beyond Ceará to the national grid to feed power-hungry industrial regions of Brazil, consumes the scarce water of 5% of the state’s population for its cooling processes. So, by subsidizing highly polluting and water-consuming coal plants in Ceará, the government is investing in intensified droughts and dirty energy that the people of Ceará don’t even need.
However, as climate justice activists denounce, biofuels can easily become false solutions if governments are not careful to implement them in a socially just manner. From forced evictions during the 2016 Rio Olympics, to the constant violence between indigenous peoples and ranchers, Brazil does not have a promising record when it comes to land rights. Not to mention that in calculating the numbers of total emissions or square kilometers of deforestation, Brazil’s planners tend to miss the point: land is not just a commodity. When land is rezoned, sold and converted from Amazon rainforest to cattle pasture to a sugar cane field for biofuels, something is lost. When forest fires finally burn out, they’ve not only released carbon into the atmosphere, destroyed biodiversity, and diseased the lungs of local people – they’ve extinguished the deep historical ties between the land and its previous inhabitants. That loss cannot be quantified.
The point is not to sit back, without urgency, because that will do nothing to stop ongoing deforestation or deter the changing climate that is already affecting the most vulnerable populations first – in Brazil, they are indigenous peoples, small farmers and fishers. The point is that focusing on mitigation technologies, like biofuels, to meet the NDC is urgency without justice and should not be a placeholder for long-term climate justice measures like securing indigenous lands and implementing low carbon agriculture. Currently, Brazil proposes the Low Carbon Emission Agriculture (ABC) Program as its “main strategy for sustainable agriculture development,” which will include “restoring an additional 15 million hectares of degraded pastures by 2030 and enhancing 5 million hectares of integrated crop-livestock-forest systems (ICLFS) by 2030.” Yet last year, only about 2% of Brazil’s agricultural development budget was destined to the ABC Program. Both culture (meat eating and traditional cattle ranching) and money (Brazil’s economic recession) are limiting factors to implementing the ABC program, but so is political will.
The COP22 Brazil Pavilion, sponsored by APEX (the Brazilian Trade and Investment Promotion Agency), boasts a flashy campaign video “Be Brasil,” designed to attract foreign investments for low carbon agriculture, reforestation and renewable energy. One frame announces that Brazil is “ready to feed the world,” as a huge tractor dumps a load of soy beans – this is concerning at a time when parts of the country are undergoing severe water shortage. The video ends by announcing that Brazil is “competitive, creative, modern, sustainable, and open for investments.” The disturbingly neoliberal undertones evoking that Brazil is for sale, reflect the country’s recent strategy for austerity and export-based economic recovery under the leadership of interim president Michel Temer. Indeed, as developing country negotiators at the COP are vehemently defending, financial investments are needed from developed countries for developing countries to achieve their NDCs. But Brazil’s poor climate report card – emissions have increased even during a recession – suggests that heading in this direction of market-based climate action requires better governance, if real emissions cuts are to be achieved.
Better governance means having the political foresight and restraint to keep fossil fuels in the ground. This is no easy feat given that the shiny profits of fossil fuels are often tied with huge corruption scandals – like the case of Petrobrás Oil that led to President Dilma Roussef’s impeachment and kickstarted the country’s political mayhem. Last Saturday, November 12th, in a side event entitled “The Real Brazil Exposed,” Brazilian climate justice activists from the drought-ridden state of Ceará convened a panel to denounce the Brazilian government’s incoherence in passing a billion dollar subsidy for the coal industry, while denying basic access to water for the people of Ceará. According to climate geologist Alexandre Costa, the largest coal power plant in the state, whose dirty energy is sent beyond Ceará to the national grid to feed power-hungry industrial regions of Brazil, consumes the scarce water of 5% of the state’s population for its cooling processes. So, by subsidizing highly polluting and water-consuming coal plants in Ceará, the government is investing in intensified droughts and dirty energy that the people of Ceará don’t even need.
Source: Jessica Kenny. At a side event on November 12th in the green zone of COP22, entitled “The Real Brazil Exposed,” Brazilian activists from the state of Ceará discuss how Brazil’s Nationally Determined Contribution (NDC) allows it to increase emissions, and continue investing in coal energy, while denying its people basic access to water. From left to right: Alexandre Araújo Costa (Universidade Estadual do Ceará), Nicole Oliveira (350.org), Roberto Anacé (indigenous leader from Ceará), and Beatriz Azevedo (Verdeluz).
Can you feel the burn of the irony? The parched inhabitants of Ceará can, but Brazil’s political leaders and citizens must too. The coal subsidy has since been vetoed by interim president Michel Temer after intense pressure from environmentalists who remain skeptical that the veto will last and that it may be a political move by Temer to save face in a time of many unpopular social cuts. These cuts in health, housing, and education have far repercussions in the climate justice movement. Just as biofuels represent false solutions to climate change, social cuts represent false solutions to a broken economy. Both will fail if not coupled with long-term adaptive strategies that invest in socioecological resilience, be they ecosystem services of indigenous peoples or capacity building for low-carbon agriculture. These strategies rely in part on sufficient finance, and largely on the good governance of leaders supported by their constituents. Considering the ironic injustice of power and water in Ceará, Brazilian citizens, particularly those of the white wealthy south, need to understand the effects of their carbon footprint on the most vulnerable people in their country and in the planet.
As Brazil launches the Biofuture Platform, activists will continue fighting for climate action that is both urgent and just, by keeping the spotlight on sustainable land management and rights, as well as raising the voices of local realities to make sure the talk abroad is coherent with the walk at home.
As Brazil launches the Biofuture Platform, activists will continue fighting for climate action that is both urgent and just, by keeping the spotlight on sustainable land management and rights, as well as raising the voices of local realities to make sure the talk abroad is coherent with the walk at home.
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