INTERVIEW - Brazil Won't Bow to Pressure for Emissions Cuts
Date: 09-Dec-05
Country: CANADA
Author: Mary Milliken
Silva, buoyed by initial success in Brazil's fight against deforestation, said she was nevertheless confident that fast-growing emerging economies like hers are doing their fair share to fight global warming.
Ministers at a UN climate-change conference in Montreal are negotiating how to proceed after 2012, when the first phase ends of the Kyoto Protocol to restrain global warming. Some 40 industrial countries agreed to cut emissions by 5.2 percent by that date. Developing countries, which argue that emissions curbs would hamper their ability to grow economically, were excluded, even though giants like Brazil, China and India are major producers of greenhouse gases.
Many believe developing nations need emissions targets beyond 2012 and that the United States, a Kyoto dropout and the leading producer of emissions, needs to sign up again.
"In the second phase, all developed countries that account for historically high rates of emissions must assume their responsibilities," Silva told Reuters.
"This does not mean developing countries don't have responsibilities and won't have internal commitments. Brazil is doing that with deforestation, one of the main sources of its emissions," she added.
Around three-quarters of Brazil's greenhouse gas emissions stem from destruction of the Amazon rain forest, home to 30 percent of the world's animal and plant species. Trees soak up carbon dioxide, the main gas blamed for global warming, and then release it when they die.
Brazil reported this week that the rate of deforestation in the Amazon rain forest fell by 30 percent in the 12 months up to August, the first decline since 2000-2001 and the biggest since 1995-1996. Officials attributed the drop to a plan launched last year aimed at curbing illegal logging.
Silva said Brazil wants to share its know-how with other tropical countries and supports a proposal at the conference to pay nations that preserve their forests.
'NO ROLLER-COASTER EFFECT'
But environmentalists are not convinced that left-leaning President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva's government can guarantee a lasting effect with the deforestation plan set up 18 months ago. They said a rebound in commodity prices could fuel more land clearing.
Silva, a petite woman raised in the far-flung Amazon state of Acre, said Brazil wants to show continual declines in the the rate of deforestation.
"We want a sustainable fall, not a roller-coaster effect," she said. "The big effort comes from combining enforcement, control and sustainable development."
Silva must contend with huge economic pressures from booming soybean farms that are pushing the sector's frontier further into the Amazon.
The state of Mato Grosso is at the heart of the struggle. It is governed by Blairo Maggi, known as the "Soy King" for his vast farming operations, and leads the Amazonian states in the rate of deforestation.
But Silva said that coordination with the soy-rich state has improved in the last couple months and Mato Grosso is beginning to show a fall in the rate of deforestation.
"I think we have everything in place to have a new direction in the state of Mato Grosso," said Silva.
