Geoscience Reference
In-Depth Information
24.4
Brazil: Environmentalism, Climate Change,
and the Roots of a Low Carbon Consciousness
Although some remarkable Brazilian thinkers had environmental concerns early in
the XIX Century (José Bonifacio, Joaquim Nabuco, Alberto Torres), they did not
impact Brazilian culture beyond very small circles of intellectuals; therefore,
environmental concerns in Brazil fl ourished mostly as the result of European and
American infl uence (Viola
1987
; Padua
2004
). The myth of abundance of natural
resources, rooted in the Brazilian mindset since colonial times, made environmental
concerns appear exaggerated in the eyes of Brazilian public opinion until the 1970s.
By that time, the scientifi c discourse against industrial pollution had been heard
and an environmental movement had started to develop, mainly in the south and
southeast of the country. In the second half of the 1980s, claims over the preservation
of the Amazon forest developed simultaneously in Brazilian and Euro-American
public opinion (Mainwaring and Viola
1984
; Viola
1988
,
1997
). Still, until 1989, the
Brazilian government argued that those claims were related to foreign imperialism
and threatened Brazilian national sovereignty.
Environmentalism gained momentum in the late 1980s and in the beginning of the
1990s. One of the greatest marks of the new environmental awareness was the inclu-
sion of a chapter dedicated to the topic in the Brazilian Constitution of 1988, enacted
after the re-democratization of the country (Box
24.1
). Internationally, Brazil became
more active in environmental negotiations; it was chosen as the host country for
the 1992 Earth Summit. Nevertheless, the Brazilian negotiating mindset was still
coupled with traditional South American narrow claims of sovereignty over natural
resources and the priority of economic development. Brazil strongly opposed being
legally bound by the Kyoto Protocol to reduce deforestation and to reduce the curve
of growth of carbon emissions in the modern sector of the economy. Moreover, it was
a member of the conservative
ad hoc
coalition (with USA, China, Canada, Russia,
and India) that dramatically weakened the climate treaty in the end of the 1990s and
during the 2000s, nullifying the progressive efforts of the European Union and Japan.
For decades, Brazilian economic elites felt Amazon deforestation was beyond
tackling. These elites argued deforestation was spread throughout a sparsely inhab-
ited region, and that the country lacked resources to deal with it. The feeling of
fatalism was disseminated in the country. It was not until the second half of the
2000s that deforestation was reduced. During the period in which Marina Silva
(2003-2008) and Carlos Minc (2008-2010) were Ministers of the Environment,
deforestation decreased from 27,000 km
2
(in 2004) to 7,500 km
2
(in 2009) (Viola
and Basso
2014
).
7
The cutback was due to legal and institutional changes
8
: (a) political
7
Annual averages. Data from the National Institute of Spatial Research (INPE),
http://www.obt.
inpe.br/prodes/index.php
.
In the fi rst two years of Da Silva's tenure (2003-04) there was a dra-
matic increase in deforestation.
8
In 1996 the old Forest Code (enacted in 1965) was changed to make compulsory the preservation
of 80 % of the vegetation in the Amazon region. In 2006 the Act on the Management of Public
Forests created the Brazilian Forest Service in order to manage the forests.
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