Brazil must improve G8 climate proposal -activists
05 Jun 2007 17:36:44 GMT Source: Reuters
By Raymond Colitt BRASILIA, June 5 (Reuters) - Brazil, one of the world's largest carbon gas emitters, must adopt more aggressive policies to help reduce global climate change, environmental activists said on Tuesday. Brazil has the world's fourth-largest amount of carbon emissions, due mostly to the destruction of the Amazon rain forest, according to international environmental groups. President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva has said his proposal at the G8 meeting of wealthy nations this week in Germany will focus on promoting low-emission biofuels, of which Brazil is one of the largest and cheapest producers. Climate change is at the center of this year's G8 summit. Environmentalists say Lula wants to be seen as a "green leader" abroad but is not one at home, refusing to adopt targets to reduce deforestation and thus carbon emissions. "Not only isn't Brazil doing its share, it's losing an opportunity to be a global environmental leader," said Eduardo Viola, a climate expert at the University of Brasilia. Of all major polluters, Brazil could reduce carbon emissions at the least cost, Viola said. Around $2 billion a year could provide improved policing and alternative development projects to slow deforestation and substantially cut emissions, he said. A dozen environmental groups lobbied Brazilian legislators on Tuesday to pass a bill granting tax breaks on "clean" investments. The proposal goes to vote in the Lower House's finance and tax committee next week. Outside Congress, 6,000 white balloons brought by environmental group WWF were a reminder of the 6 million tons of greenhouse gas it said Brazil emits daily. The Amazon, the world's largest rain forest, releases stored carbon dioxide when trees are burnt or decompose, Contributing to global warming. Advancing farmers and loggers clear country-sized chunks of the forest every year -- more when grain, beef or timber prices are high, less when they fall. BLAMING RICH COUNTRIES Lula blames rich countries for global warming and says they have no authority to tell Brazil what to do with the Amazon because they have cut down all their trees. But critics say that is a poor excuse. "Selling more ethanol abroad isn't a strategy to reduce emissions here, on the contrary," said WWF's Climate Change Officer Karen Suassuna, referring to accusations that the growing production of sugar cane, the raw material for ethanol, exacerbated deforestation. "If Lula were serious about climate change he should commit to deforestation targets," said Suassuna. WWF also wants the government to halt several large-scale infrastructure projects in the Amazon, increase nature reserves and improve their effective protection. But farm and industry lobbies, which demand more land, roads, and energy, oppose a more aggressive climate change policy, analysts say. "They control the agriculture and industry ministries," said Paulo Motinho, coordinator at the Environmental Research Institute of the Amazon, or IPAM. "In addition, you have the nationalists in the Foreign Ministry, who see climate change as a rich versus poor country issue".
