In the next weeks, another UN Climate Conference of the Parties (COP 28) will take place in Dubai. The conference will have four main axes: accelerating energetic transition for reduction of carbon emissions until 2030; strengthening the fights against climate alterations, which fulfills old promises, among which turning the climate fund into a concrete reality; placing nature, people, lives and the means of survival in the centre of climate action; establishing itself as a space of inclusion. As we can observe, the challenges are not small, especially if we think about the disputes around it.
About energetic transition, the war in Ukraine increased the pressure for reducing the usage of fossil fuels, as it exposed European countries to a risky situation regarding gas supply. Due to that, developed countries started to increase investments for energy transition, with stimulation to wind and solar power, and to the use of electric vehicles, among other measures. It happens that such technologies, which are considered renewable, are responsible for the increase in the demand for metals like lithium, copper and nickel, which lead to the destruction caused by mineral extractivism in the Global South, continuing the colonialist practices which damage environmental justice.
Furthermore, energetic transition, as it is being thought, grants protagonism to corporations, specially transnational ones, keeping the concentration of the means of production and not sharing the control nor the technologies. Many corporations in the petrol and mineral sectors have adhered to the discourse on climate change, adopting “greenwashing” policies. An example of that is the adhesion to Net Zero mechanisms ,in which instead of reducing the production and emission of polluting gases, corporations compensate their polluting chain with carbon credits which are dirty, violent and polluting, and which make people lose rights. Not by chance, companies Vale S.A and Braskem will unfortunately be in Space Brazil at COP 28 talking about that issue.
Likewise, defending the organisation of the carbon market, governors in Brazilian states founded “Green Brazil Consortium” at COP 26, which must have a more prominent participation in the next conference. That consortium, which will also have panels in Space Brazil, points to the need to build a Brazilian Market for Reduction of Emissions (BMRE) and a national standard of payment for environmental services (PES). The governors are also interested in the Climate Action Plan (CAP 2050) released by the federal government with the goal of reaching net zero emissions until 2050. The plan describes several mitigating policies for economic sectors like transportation, energy and agriculture, creating business opportunities for the state governments with the promotion of climate actions.
For COP 28, it is expected that Brazil will be involved in the discussions about the creation of a Loss and Damage Fund, following Sharm El-Sheikh’s Implementation Plan of the Paris Agreements. In 2022, at COP 27, before his inauguration, president Lula highlighted his commitment to fighting deforestation – main cause of emissions in this country – connected to the development of policies against inequality. In his speech, the president mentioned the role indigenous people have in preservation. It remains to be known if that same line of discussion will be kept when decisions about who will have access to the funds need to be made. It is also worth mentioning that the Ministry for the Environment and Climate Change has been making efforts to create the Climate Fund.
The droughts in the Amazon and the floods in Southern Brazil are socioenvironmental disasters exemplary of the immediate consequences of climate change. Analysing their consequences, we may observe that the damages are distributed unevenly among poor people, women, black people and rural and peripheral communities. In general, the most serious climate damages are felt in communities which are already weakened by contexts of social inequality and lack of rights and of investments in infrastructure.
Considering those inequalities, when announcing a COP which aims to be really inclusive, there must be a paradigm shift so that the central position of nature, people, human life, historic debts and reparations may be in the centre of economy, not a simple ornament for the market. We know that the spaces of COP have been taken by the hegemony of the big transnational corporations’ views and their same old false market solutions which have brought us here with the green economy of the stock exchange’s dollar and focus on profit. Mitigation policies are not connecting the solutions of the peoples with the enforcement of human rights, access and permanence on land and territories of peoples and communities as an action to protect the woods, waters and forests, as can be seen in the best-preserved territories. Instead, they are reducing carbon metrics.
Popular movements and organisations of civil society defend a deep rethinking of multilateral climate spaces. We cannot go on building answers for climate alterations which do not confront the root of the problem, i.e. the extremely unequal way we produce, generate, circulate and commercialise in the capitalist society. Likewise, we need to acknowledge that the climate crisis does not reflect only the physical aspects of the planet. That approach is limited and limiting. Actually, climate crisis is intertwined with historical forms of gender, race and class violence, and with colonialism. There is a historical debt of environmental degradation in many countries which cannot be reduced to mitigating policies nor to financial indemnisation by a Fund.
The change starts by looking at the big picture of causes and consequences of climate alterations. Rethinking the role that determined actors will have in the negotiations of humanity’s future. In that sense, transnational corporation have a role more as defendant than protagonist in the solutions. Popular movements, women and representatives of civil society have been increasingly absent from the centres which decide about climate governance. The negotiations keep being sieved by the Global North towards the Global South. We recognise that in the last years, climate COPs have become unproductive spaces in which there are no concrete advances in the reduction of Earth’s destruction, precisely due to the way they are being organised.
What about Brazil? So far, the federal government follows the book of green economy. Many ministries have been working to regulate the carbon market, especially REDD (Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation), without carrying out studies on the impacts on the lifestyle of communities. Other initiatives like bioeconomy advance quickly towards building public policies. On the other hand, efforts to legalise the titles of quilombola territories, demarcate indigenous lands and against the thesis of “marco temporal”, to promote agroecology move slowly.
While climate justice, as an action to face climate alterations centering on the promotion of effective, fair, inclusive public policies which respect human and socioenvironmental rights, is not the main focus in the climate negotiations, there will be no repair to the planet. While those who destroy the climate are the owners of its governance, we will keep on making deals which will lead to failure.
Edition: Thalita Pires
Text originally published in Portuguese in the newspaper Brasil de Fato, in: https://www.brasildefato.com.br/2023/11/07/para-onde-vamos-com-as-negociacoes-do-clima
