Originally published on LinkedIn Articles on Sept 24, 2023
So we read on the news that Monday, September 25, Brazil and the US start working towards a partnership on climate issues. Yet one more morsel of news after a week of seeing, hearing and thinking the Amazon — in New York.
Brazil arrived for the UN General Assembly with a concerted message: from the president, ministers and representatives in official events to multiple parallel climate panels happening on the sidelines of the Assembly, we kept hearing the chorus ‘save the Amazon’ and ‘sustainable growth is necessary.’
It was part fun — a show with drones and music by Indigenous artists over the East River and a festival in Central Park’s Summerstage with multiple artists from the North and Northeast got people up on their feet, dancing away — and part serious.
“Brazil only loses with deforestation, but our challenge is to give the forest population a dignified life,” was Minister Fernando Haddad’s message at Columbia University. “The world sees Brazil through the lenses of forest preservation. But we have more to give. We can double our clean energy production, for consumption and for export. We can help several industries become sustainable.” Environment Minister Marina Silva was direct: “We are living in inertia of what we have already accomplished, but whatever we’re doing, it is not enough,” she said in a poetic and philosophical speech at the university.
The main song was a collaboration between Haddad and Marina’s cabinets dubbed the Plan for Ecological Transformation. The plan presented to President Lula back in July is a wish list of policies and initiatives ranging from implementing a carbon pricing scheme (currently being debated in Congress, with the hope to have it approved before COP 28 in the UAE in November…) and green bonds, to government procurement rules and tax reform. But getting their bucket list off the ground is a different tune, and if talking to the international community may help increase pressure, it doesn’t make it a reality. Hurdles include a skeptic portion of the private sector, including players in agricultural industries, a convoluted bureaucracy, especially at the state and municipal levels, and, to use a technical term, a crazy tax system. (Not to mention a still difficult political environment at home and all the backwinds coming from the global scenario.)
The main goal being taunted across Manhattan all week, to keep the forest standing, needs loads of cash. There is an urgent need to finance the transition from an illicit economy, but even more urgent is to find a way to get that cash to the last mile. “We need to pay people on the ground, an income stream is necessary,” said Talanoa Institute President Natalie Unterstell during The Wilson Center panel Unlocking Climate Finance In Latin America and the Caribbean. Indeed. Right now, crime is a major employer in the Amazon. IDB’s Susana Cordeiro Guerra says it is important to think bigger also. “We have to move the goal post to the trillion,” she said, but adding that “we need to be able to measure progress.” Herein yet another challenge.
There is light at the end of the tunnel though. Cordeiro said that the Green Coalition formed by development banks to collaborate on the Amazon issue will allow for the exchange of information on initiatives and formats, an idea that should increase their impact. And the newfound mainstream understanding that local communities do have the know-how and can help others understand how to protect the environment can give all efforts a leg up. As Minister Menezes said, “Brazil’s Indigenous peoples have a sophisticated notion of ecology.”
Now, the real challenge is to get things done. “To speak and not to act is worse than hypocrisy, it is a crime against humanity,” said Minister Silva. She was truly inspired on her presentations across the island of Manhattan. She might have been moved by the unprecedented moment of seeing Brazil’s leadership singing to the tune she has been pounding on for decades.
Cecilia Tornaghi 