Representatives of Brazilian civil society left mark on COP26 climate summit

The view was expressed by experts who took part in a webinar organized by FAPESP to discuss COP26, the climate conference held in Glasgow UK on October 31-November 13.

By Karina Ninni  |  Agência FAPESP – Institutions and political processes will have to change in order for the impact of climate change to be addressed, according to the researchers who took part in a webinar on “Ways forward for Brazil post-COP26”, held on November 16 by the FAPESP Research Program on Global Climate Change (RPGCC). They stressed the importance of participation by representatives of Brazilian civil society in the COP26 climate summit, held in Glasgow between October 31 and November 13. 

The discussion was mediated by Paulo Artaxo, a professor at the University of São Paulo (USP) and a member of the RPGCC’s steering committee. The other speakers were Ana Toni, Executive Director of the Institute for Climate and Society (iCS), a Rio de Janeiro-based nonprofit that promotes prosperity, justice and low-carbon development; Jacques Marcovitch, a professor at the University of São Paulo’s School of Economics and Administration (FEA-USP); and Eduardo Trani, São Paulo State Undersecretary for the Environment. The event was opened by Marco Antônio Zago, President of FAPESP, and Luiz Eugênio Mello, FAPESP’s Scientific Director.  

“Our focus in this discussion is whether on balance the outcome of COP26 was positive or negative, and what are the ways forward now,” Zago said. “I prefer to emphasize the positive side. Achieving a consensus among almost 200 countries on rules for reducing consumption of fossil fuels, with the signature of 28 agreements including a 45-country commitment to making agriculture more sustainable, seem to me to be examples of at least partial success.”

During COP26, Zago noted, FAPESP led the launch of a research fund focusing on the Amazon. “We’ve initially allocated up to BRL 100 million, and expect the total amount to be boosted by national and multilateral contributions. It’s called Amazon Fund +10, and will be maintained by São Paulo plus nine other Brazilian states and their respective research funding agencies. FAPESP has always played a key role in funding this field of research. In more or less a quarter of a century, it has allocated BRL 660 million to research on the Amazon and tropical forests, awarding more than 2,000 scholarships and more than 1,000 other grants. We’re waiting for applications and suggestions from scientists.”

For Artaxo, there is a wide gap between climate science and the results of the diplomatic negotiations that took place at COP26. “The latest report from the IPCC [Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change] shows the need for a 45% reduction in emissions by 2030 if the global temperature rise is to be limited to 1.5 °C. The results of COP26 mean a rise of between 2.4 °C and 2.7 °C, instead of the 1.5 °C recommended by the science. On the upside, an agreement was reached to reduce deforestation globally to zero by 2030. Brazil announced a commitment to zero deforestation by 2028,” said Artaxo, who is a member of the IPCC.

Pros and cons

Toni also discussed the pros and cons of COP26. “In my view, finishing the Paris Agreement rulebook was very important, because this chapter had to be complete so that implementation could begin,” she said. “I’d also like to stress that no previous COP saw so many voluntary declarations – on coal, methane, deforestation. Some took the shape of bilateral agreements, for example. That’s a good thing, but at the same time, it makes some of us concerned about the multilateral process. We must pick up the pace, and this is already hard with 195 countries, so the formation of ‘small clubs’ on methane or deforestation is troubling. It would be great if they were complementary to multilateral agreements, but we need to take care not to let them become substitutes for such agreements.” 

A negative aspect noted by Toni was the fact that the developed countries failed to set up the USD 100 billion fund promised in 2015. “This is an international policy mistake, not because of the amount of money but because if one party fails to meet its obligation to put money on the table the other parties also feel entitled to break their promises,” she said.

Public participation is also important. “Private enterprise is always involved, but typically it’s the directors of sustainability and marketing. This time we had CEOs of big companies, the top executives of JBS, Marfrig, Suzano. More than ten governors, mayors, many members of parliaments and congresses, indigenous leaders, Black movement leaders, youth movement leaders,” Toni said.

On the downside, too little attention was paid to the politics of decarbonization. “We talk too little about the political transition required for decarbonization to be achieved and to mitigate the impact of climate change. This discussion hasn’t really begun. FAPESP can help. What political processes will we need to change in order to have systems and policies that address the challenges of climate change? We haven’t really started to talk about this properly, in Brazil or the world,” she stressed.

São Paulo

Trani highlighted the initiatives undertaken by the state of São Paulo in the field of research, with FAPESP in the lead. “Since 2019, we’ve invested around BRL 30 million in three research lines with the aim of having coherent public policies,” he said, referring to FAPESP’s programs on biodiversity (BIOTA), bioenergy (BIOEN) and climate change (RPGCC).

“These initiatives spurred the actions of the state government in preparation for COP26. The governor set up an ad hoc civil society council [including entities such as WWF, WRI, and SOS Mata Atlântica] to help draft an agenda for the conference. São Paulo state accepted the UN’s climate leader and champion challenges, and formally signed up to the two main campaigns in advance of COP26: the Race to Zero [making the state net carbon zero by 2050] and the Race to Resilience. Around 95% of São Paulo’s population live in cities, so the impact of climate change is dramatic. The Race to Resilience campaign is as important as the Race to Zero. The governor signed decrees with concrete targets and undertook to announce a climate action plan called Net Zero 2050 by the middle of next year.”

According to Trani, one of the most important issues discussed at COP26 was a new organization of national governance. “It is so difficult to maintain a dialogue with the federal government that Brazilian governance was transferred to the Brazilian association of environmental entities [ABEMA],” he explained. “Another major initiative was the convening via civil society of a movement called Governors for Climate. This was started by [Alfredo] Sirkis, who unfortunately has since passed away. This movement now has 24 state governors working to advance the climate agenda. We brought many actors into this grand effort to transform society,” he said.

Trani also mentioned a voluntary compact to reduce emissions called the São Paulo Environmental Agreement, to which around 1,000 companies have signed up so far. “We also took the topics of forest restoration and the bioeconomy to COP26. São Paulo’s biomes are under huge pressure, especially the Cerrado and Atlantic Rainforest, but deforestation has been brought under complete control in the state since 2010,” he said.

Contexts and prospects

Marcovitch focused on the context for the preparations for COP26 and looked ahead at the prospects for the next conference. “The context in 2021 combined a public health crisis [with falling HDIs], an economic crisis [with worsening unemployment], a social crisis [with growing inequality], a political crisis [with polarization] and a geopolitical crisis [with unpredictability]. This was the climate in which we prepared for and took part in COP26,” he said. 

“2022 promises to be a year of major adversities. We have the FIFA soccer World Cup [in Qatar] and a presidential election here in Brazil. The economic outlook is one of stagflation [low or zero economic growth with high inflation] and a social crisis with unemployment and exclusion, which will fuel demand for short-term solutions. In this context, environmental issues will have to be connected to short- and medium-term issues in order to be included on the nation’s political agenda. I’d also cite the political crisis, the importance of engaging the political parties on these issues, the renewal of their leaderships, their behavior with regard to next year’s elections, and our role in taking society’s expectations to them.  The geopolitical sphere is unpredictable. At COP26 in Glasgow, we should note, China positioned itself in two ways: joining the Group of 77 on one hand, and negotiating bilaterally with the US on the other.”

From a legal perspective, Marcovitch stressed the need to monitor the commitments made by the G20 at COP26 and by national and subnational governments. “There’s rhetoric and there are commitments, but rational mechanisms are needed to monitor implementation of their plans,” he said.

Another question he raised was how to move from research that generates challenges to research that develops solutions and takes into account the need to create jobs, income, wellbeing, and social inclusion. “We must also consider how to educate and train the new generations, and how to reformulate our course curricula so as to include the climate agenda in all the relevant disciplines,” he said. 

Finally, he listed five priorities for 2022: building competencies to achieve the targets; building multilevel governance that includes social actors, is experimentalist in the sense of applying itself to all problems, and is self-renovating in response to the adversities encountered; connecting the short, medium and long term by means of solutions; promoting engagement by academia, the media and civil society; and preparing for COP27 and other future meetings. 

Carbon market

After the presentations, Artaxo took questions from the audience. One of these referred to the world’s legal systems, which are starting to take decisive action on climate issues. A Dutch court, for example, has ruled that Shell must accelerate its efforts to reduce carbon dioxide emissions to tackle climate change. Could this be a way to put extra pressure on governments? 

Marcovitch answered first. “Perhaps we should say first and foremost that Brazil is already experiencing judicialization. Our Supreme Court has been called upon to rule on both the Amazon Fund and the Climate Fund. We do indeed have to be certain that the commitments will be met. Civil society must mobilize to demand that promises are kept,” he said. “This must be done with a certain amount of care because we need to think about the next step. Using the example of Shell, on this very day we’ve just heard that the company is moving its headquarters to the UK. It’s a good idea to think about judicialization, but care should always be taken to consider what happens next.”

For Toni, the idea of climate justice can be analyzed from several angles. “Judicialization is only one facet. Climate law is another. Climate litigation, which is growing and will explode both in Brazil and elsewhere, is a third,” she said.

Questions were also sent in about the carbon market and the extent to which it can really help reduce emissions: the balance for the climate is zero, given that via this mechanism one party stops emitting but another emits in its place. 

Toni said COP26 saw “a gigantic extrapolation” of the discussion about Article 6 [which deals with the carbon market]: “It was as if the carbon market was a silver bullet that could save humankind. What we know is that it’s one economic instrument among many, such as taxation, green tax reform, transferring subsidies that are going to the wrong places, payment for ecosystem services. It can make a specific contribution by pinpointing opportunities to decarbonize faster at a lower cost. It can help accelerate the process if climate integrity exists.”

For Marcovitch, the carbon market is a way of saying that the market will determine prices based on supply and demand. “Carbon tax is something predictable and comes with a risk, in terms of how the revenue from this tax is spent. Ideally, it should all be spent on improving environmental sustainability, but as we know that isn’t always the case,” he said. “The key question as far as the carbon market is concerned is that it’s not seen as a means of cutting emissions but as a way to stimulate technological innovation. The carbon market should exist to get companies to enhance their ability to achieve this goal.” 

Trani was asked how São Paulo will monitor the effectiveness of the actions proposed in its Net Zero 2050 Plan. “The first step we took was to establish an agreement with [the coalition of civil society organizations] Observatório do Clima to use the data from its Greenhouse Gas Emission and Removal Estimating System [SEEG] as the key annual metric in this regard,” he said. “We’ve also signed agreements with other institutions, such as SOS Mata Atlântica, for example. We have until mid-2022 to work out the rules for this monitoring.” 

Marcovitch stressed the need for adaptability on the part of institutions and organizations. “Some could have a sort of ‘sunset clause’ and be destined to shut down at some future date once they’ve completed their mission,” he said. 

Toni commented on the importance of transitions in governance to assure political stability. “In Brazil, the surveys we’ve conducted on this subject show societal concern about climate issues, but this hasn’t translated into votes. Until climate change becomes a priority for voters, politicians will continue to prefer not to talk about it,” she said.

Trani noted the effort made by São Paulo to strengthen the mechanisms of civil society representation, with thrusts in two main directions. “We’re reinforcing participation by councils in all environmental spheres, and we’re also training our public agents,” he said. “Political stability can’t be sustained in decentralized management unless we strengthen the mechanisms for participation by society with clear processes, while also investing in education and training. Target setting includes the involvement of partners.”

A complete recording of the webinar “Ways forward for Brazil post-COP26” can be watched at: www.youtube.com/watch?v=dxApsFHQ7XY.