Giovana Girardi did an excellent analysis for Estadão on the difficulties that Brazil will face at COP25 if the government’s plan is only to get more money. First, because it would have to explain the high rates of deforestation in the Amazon and the ending of the moratorium to grow sugarcane in the Amazon, among other things. And second, because the money that minister Salles say rich countries owe to Brazil should be channeled preferentially to poor – not developing – countries.
Daniela Chiaretti got some great quotes from minister Salles on her piece for O Globo. Things like “that’s none of my business, the market will handle it”, “if leakage [deforestation] goes to a neighbouring country, that’s their problem” and even “either the Paris Agreement has a positive result for Brazil or we won’t stay around negotiating things without any practical value. What’s in it for Brazil in this?”. Chiaretti also reports that the minister said that they’re close to strike a deal with Germany and Norway to get new conservation funds. An interesting observation noted in the piece is that, just before the COP, the Brazilian government recreated some of the environmental administrative administrations that had been dismantled during the first months of the Bolsonaro government. The move would be a strategy to try to channel more foreign resources for conservation.
Climainfo has a nice piece on Brazil’s role at COP25. They compiled information from different sources to make a couple of interesting points. One of them is that, according to Jake Springs, from Reuters, Brazil’s climate negotiators “are in the dark on their own government’s aims”. In Climainfo they argue that this could lead to situations such as that deals agreed by the negotiators are later rejected by the government. The piece also includes quotes from a piece in DW where Tasso Azevedo, an expert in climate negotiations, regrets that Brazil has lost its role as an environmental champion, which the country held since Rio 1992.