Brazil protests: the price of progress

Boaventura de Sousa Santos – The Guardian, 06/28/2013

With the election of President Dilma Rousseff, Brazil decided to pick up the pace in its effort to become a global power. Although quite a few steps in this direction had been initiated before, they were then given a renewed impetus: see the United Nations conference on environment and development and Rio+20, both in 2012; the Fifa World Cup in 2014; the 2016 Olympic Games; the ongoing quest for a permanent seat on the UN security council; the active role in the growing prominence of the “emerging economies” (Brics – Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa); José Graziano da Silva’s 2012 appointment as director general of the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation, and, as of 2013, Roberto Azevêdo’s appointment as director general of the World Trade Organisation; an aggressive policy for the exploration of natural resources both in Brazil and in Africa, particularly in Mozambique; and the favouring of large-scale industrial agriculture, namely with respect to livestock and soy production as well as agro-fuels.

Boasting a positive international image earned by President Lula da Silva’s social inclusion policies, this developmentalist Brazil has come across in the eyes of the world as a novel, benevolent, inclusive type of power. Thus the international community couldn’t be more surprised when, over the last week, hundreds of thousands of people took to the streets of the country’s major cities in order to demonstrate. While Turkey’s recent demonstrations were promptly explained away in terms of the “two Turkeys” interpretation, it has proved more difficult to recognise the coexistence of “two Brazils”. Nevertheless, there it is before our own eyes.

The difficulty in recognising the latter phenomenon lies in the very nature of the “other Brazil”, which tends to defy simplistic analyses. It is made up of three narratives and temporalities. The first is the narrative of social exclusion (in one of the world’s most unequal countries), of the landowning oligarchies, of violent bossism (“caciquismo”) and of small, racist political elites. It goes back to colonial times and has replicated itself in ever-changing shapes to this day.

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Rio+20: reasons to be cheerful

John Vidal- The Guardian, 6/27/2012

Read the post mortems and commentaries from Rio+20, and you’d think a global disaster had taken place. The UN multilateral system is said to be in crisis, the environment is falling off the edge, and every blade of grass and hillside is for sale. Pundits and NGOs scream that it was “the greatest failure of collective leadership since the first world war”, “a bleak day, a disastrous meeting” and “a massive waste of time and money”.

Perspective, please. Reaction after the 1992 Rio summit was uncannily similar. Countries passed then what now seem far-sighted treaties and embedded a slew of aspirations and commitments into international documents – but NGOs and journalists were still distraught. They said the climate change agreement was too weak, that sustainable development was too abstract a concept, that the promised aid was inadequate, and that the US had guaranteed the felling of the Amazon forest by refusing to sign the biodiversity convention. There were, they said, no agreements on population growth or subsidies, or oceans, or trade, or women’s rights … and myriad other issues. In short, just like Rio 2012, the meeting was said to be a dismal failure of governments to co-operate.

I was pretty downhearted then, too. So when I returned I went to see Richard Sandbrook, a legendary environmental activist who co-founded Friends of the Earth, directed the International Institute for Environment and Development (IIED), and profoundly influenced a generation of governments, business leaders and NGOs before he died in 2005. Sandbrook made the point (I paraphrase) that NGOs always scream murder because it is their job to push governments, that pundits exaggerate because they are controversialists, and that UN conferences must disappoint because all views have to be accommodated.

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UAE’s Mubadala Targets Brazil for Energy Partnerships

Diana Kinch – Wall Street Journal, 6/20/2012

RIO DE JANEIRO–United Arab Emirates investment-and-development company Mubadala Development Co. is targeting large companies in Brazil to set up cooperation projects in the renewable-energy area, the director of a Mubadala unit said Wednesday.

“We have been interested in Brazil for some time. Brazil’s high on our agenda,” said Nawal Al-Hosany, director of Mubadala’s Masdar unit in an interview on the sidelines of the Rio+20 sustainable-development summit in Rio de Janeiro.

Last month, Mubadala purchased for $2 billion a 5.6% stake in Brazilian billionaire Eike Batista’s EBX group, which has interests in areas including energy, oil, mining and real estate.

Mubadala also is interested in health care, information technology, infrastructure and aerospace, Ms. Al-Hosany said.

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“Brazil can do great things for itself, Vinod Thomas”

O Globo, 6/20/2012

Summary:

Just in the past five years, Brazil has shown that it’s capable of making incredible advances. Indian economist, ex-director of the World Bank in Brazil and General Director of Independent Evaluation of the Asian Development Bank Vinod Thomas explains that while Brazil may still be developing, through streamlining the process of sustainable developments at a local level, Brazil has a chance at continued prosperity and green development.

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Rio+20 Is Our Chance to Recognize the Benefits Healthy Oceans Have for People

Greg Stone – Huffington Post, 6/21/2012

When President John Kennedy was inaugurated in 1961, he issued the world a set of challenges. He said, “Let both sides seek to invoke the wonders of science instead of its terrors. Together let us explore the stars, conquer the deserts, eradicate disease, tap the ocean depths and encourage the arts and commerce.”

The United States answered his challenge when it came to space exploration, but in many ways, we missed the mark on the oceans. It is only now, more than 50 years later, that the world is finally turning its collective attention to the other 70 percent of Earth which so dominates its appearance from space and affects every aspect of our survival.

This week, world leaders and delegates from over 190 nations are meeting in Rio de Janeiro to address the great challenges of sustainable development and build a new model of green growth in the coming century. One of the most important issues they are discussing is the state of our planet’s oceans, and rightfully so; they are at the foundation of all that we do, and ocean health will determine the direction of our quality of life in the 21st century.

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Rio+20: Prince Charles sends warning to Earth summit

The Guardian, 6/18/2012

In a prerecorded speech to the Rio+20 UN sustainable development conference today, the Prince of Wales warned of the potentially “catastrophic” consequences of inaction on issues such as climate change and global food security.

In the video address, Charles said: “I have watched in despair at how slow progress has sometimes been and how the outright, sceptical reluctance by some to engage with the critical issues of our day have often slowed that progress to a standstill.

“As I speak, the world’s rainforests continue to be destroyed, wiping out so much of the world’s vital biodiversity and removing our chances of storing carbon naturally.

“And we continue to ignore the painful lessons of the so-called green revolution in India by intensifying our food production methods in such blinkered, chemically and technologically-based ways, that the land and the oceans are now both beginning to fail.”

He added: “Already levels of CO2 have exceeded 400 parts per million. 450 parts per million is the tipping point we have to avoid so every day of delay threatens to make the change more dramatic.”

He added that scientific evidence shows the potential consequences and warned we can no longer ignore the risk.

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Rio+20: Sustainable development needs women’s empowerment, UN official says

United Nations – 6/18/2012

Sustainable development will not be achieved without empowering women, the head of the United Nations agency tasked with advancing gender equality said today, adding that the importance of their participation must be reflected in all aspects of the outcome document of the UN Conference on Sustainable Development (Rio+20).“We cannot afford to leave women marginalized,” the Executive Director of the UN Entity for Gender Equality and the Empowerment of Women (UN Women), Michelle Bachelet, told reporters today in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. “This is not sustainable. This social exclusion of women is not only hurting women, it is hurting all of us.”

On Friday, the responsibility for the negotiations on the outcome document was handed over to the Brazilian Government, which holds the Presidency of Rio+20. The South American nation has since presented a shorter consolidated text for countries to work on, and indicated that the consultation process on the document is expected to conclude on 18 June. It will then be put forward for adoption by Member States, when they meet from 20 to 22 June.

In her comments, Ms. Bachelet said that the outcome document must highlight women’s roles throughout the entire text, as their participation permeates all aspects of sustainable development, including agriculture, education, environmental management and decision-making, among others.

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Politicians can’t save the environment

Peter Bjerregaard – Huffington Post, 6/19/2012

The Rio+20 summit will accentuate the management crisis that characterizes international environmental corporation. Politicians probably won’t agree on anything substantial. Instead, new networks — spearheaded by companies, NGOs and cities — will set the agenda for the future.

“This is no way to run a planet,” wrote Todd Stern, American chief negotiator on climate change in a letter to former President Georg W. Bush in 2007, and stressed that just like you can’t run a company through large plenary sessions with shareholders, you can’t solve global challenges by inviting roughly 200 countries to conferences with extensive agendas. But that’s exactly what’s happening in Rio at the moment.

The Rio+20 conference marks the 20th anniversary of the first Earth Summit on Sustainable Development held in Rio in 1992. The summit attracted momentous media attention and resulted in a number of international conventions on sustainability, biodiversity and climate. But what has happened with these objectives? According to the newly published U.N. report, Global Environment Outlook, there has been progress in only a handful of nearly 90 indicators. Access to clean water has improved, investments in renewable energy have increased and the ozone layer getting better — but then the stream of good news stops. On almost all other areas the picture look bleak. CO2 has risen by 40 percent, biodiversity in the tropics has decreased by 30 percent, etc.

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Rio+20 seen as last chance for rainforest

Joe Leahy – Financial Times, 6/19/2012

When Greenpeace accused Brazil’s JBS, the world’s largest beef exporter, of  sourcing cattle from illegally deforested parts of the Amazon this month, the  company’s response was swift.

An angry JBS immediately filed a lawsuit against the  environmental activist group and won a court injunction last week restricting  dissemination of Greenpeace’s report.

Round one may have gone to JBS but Greenpeace’s timing could hardly have been  more strategic.

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Rio +20 Earth Summit: Down with Fossil Fuel Subsidies and Up with Food Sovereignty

Ronald Bailey – Reason.com , 6/19/2012

Rio de Janeiro—No United Nations conference is complete without a plethora of side events put on by various officially approved activist groups, and Rio +20 Earth Summit is no exception. I sampled two on Monday. The more promising side event was a panel organized by the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) arguing for “Phasing Out Fossil Fuel Subsidies by 2015.” Promising, because subsidies are generally a bad idea, as they waste resources by distorting consumer and producer choices away from more economically efficient outcomes. In 2009, at the G-20 Summit in Pittsburgh the leaders of the world’s biggest economies agreed to phase out fossil fuels subsidies. Jake Schmidt from the NRDC cited figures ballparking global fossil fuel subsidies ata projected $775 billion in 2012[PDF]. The vast majority, $630 billion, was consumption subsidies in developing countries. Global producer subsidies, including special tax breaks, loan guarantees, and export credits, amounted to $100 billion and developed countries provided $45 billion in consumption subsidies.

Schmidt claimed that eliminating fossil fuel subsidies would not only save governments $775 billion, but would also reduce global carbon dioxide emissions by 6 percent, and primary energy demand by 5 percent, if done by 2020. This would mean a reduction of 2.6 gigatons of carbon dioxide which is equal to about half of U.S. annual emissions. He also cited modeling studies that calculated that removing the distortions caused by subsidies would actually boost world GDP by an extra 0.7 percent by 2050.

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