Brazil: From Climate Change Ally to Enemy?

In Glasgow last month, Brazil brought the second biggest national delegation, which signed a number of pledges, including one that strives to end illegal deforestation by 2030. Yet President Bolsonaro was notably absent from the conference. What's more, only a few weeks after the country's proactive stance at COP26, the government's national report highlighted a worrying deforestation rate in the Amazon rainforest. Between 2020 and 2021, deforestation has reached unseen levels. Winston Fritsch, trustee at the Brazilian Center for International Relations (CEBRI) and a member of its Environment and Climate Change Program, analyzes Brazil's perceived climate change reversal.

Once considered a global climate leader, Brazil has fallen short of living up to its reputation in recent years under Jair Bolsonaro's presidency. Yet, in the weeks leading up to the COP26, the country stepped up its climate pledges to portray itself as a "green power". It noticeably aims to achieve carbon neutrality by 2050, and to end illegal deforestation by 2028. How do you explain this significant shift in Brazil's policy towards climate change? 

It is widely recognized that, until 2019, when President Bolsonaro took office, Brazil had traditionally been at the forefront of UN initiatives regarding climate change. It hosted the historic 1992 UN Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED) in Rio, also known as the Earth Summit. It also played a key role in driving the COP’s achievements, especially during the 2015 COP21 in Paris. 

From its inception, however, Bolsonaro’s policy towards climate change represented a historic turning point for Brazil’s traditional stance on the issue. Bolsonaro became a well-known negationist, denying the scientific evidence behind climate change, and rejecting the virtues of the post-war multilateral system. At the time, that approach was common to a number of new right-wing governments, most notably following the election of Donald Trump in the United States. Under Bolsonaro’s tenure, past governments’ efforts to curb illicit activities in the protected biome were repeatedly abandoned and the devastation of the Amazon forest was accelerated, as the graph below indicates. Yet, until recently, the president has repeatedly denied this reality in public. This starkly illustrates his neglect of the environmental agenda, which some would go as far as to call a "boycott"). 

Over the past few months, the situation has begun to change. As we get closer to next year’s presidential election, and along with Bolsonaro’s significant drop in popularity, the COP26 has slowly transformed into an opportunity for the government to shift gears on the climate change issue.