Amid environmental control “blackout”, Minister delays data on Brazilian GHG emissions

The minister of the Environment Ricardo Salles proposed to delay the delivery of the 4th report on greenhouse gas emissions in Brazil which was due on December 2020 to the United Nations (UN) under the country’s commitment to the Climate Change Convention.

According to Folha de S. Paulo, the minister’s intention is to gain time to change the categorization of emissions data from the agricultural sector. “Salles proposes to move emissions from agriculture to another category, called land use and forests”. In addition, “activities that contribute to removing carbon from the atmosphere - such as the recovery of degraded pastures - would no longer be added as a change in land use, starting to count as positive points for the agricultural sector,” said the article.

In another measure related to climate policy, earlier this month, Salles announced the creation of the Floresta + CARBONO program, with the objective of “promoting a favorable and effective business environment to provide legal security to the forest carbon market”, according to the portal of the Ministry of the Environment, which states that the program would have “great potential” for forest conservation.

If, on the one hand, MMA is mobilizing to benefit the agricultural sector, on the other hand, the ministry is experiencing a blackout of environmental fines. The lack of enforcing penalties, reported by the Climate Observatory (OC), is attributed to Decree 9,760, signed by President Bolsonaro in April 2019, which amended the Environmental Crimes Law of 2008 and established “conciliation centers” to review fines and penalties by Ibama and ICMBio. The study showed that, since then, Ibama has held only five conciliation hearings out of the 7,205 scheduled, while ICMBio has held none. “In practice, the offenders got a gift,” said the OC. The decree, baptized by activists as “Punishment Zero”, became the target of a political parties’ lawsuit filed in the Supreme Federal Court asking for its annulment on October 21.