The CIM (Interministerial Committee on Climate Change) of the Lula (PT) government approved, this Monday (15), the final version of the Climate Plan, after the Ministry of Agriculture threatened to block the proposal due to the obligation to reduce deforestation.
To break the impasse, the Ministry of the Environment, which coordinates the work, added an explicit mention to the document of actions that include the expansion and implementation of financial instruments aimed at protecting the forest or at sustainable production (for example, rural credit lines or financing funds).
He also changed the word “deforestation” to removal of vegetation – which technically means the same thing, but is terminology that faces less resistance from the agribusiness sector.
As shown LeafCarlos Fávaro’s department (PSD) actively worked on drafting the first version of the document, but then turned against him and began working to reduce the sector’s responsibilities.
The plan is one of the main climate policies of the Lula government and the Ministry of Environment intended to present it at COP30, the United Nations thematic conference that took place in Belém (PA), but Agriculture blocked it, due to differences.
The Climate Plan is made up of a set of documents which determine the directions, by sector, for reducing CO emissions.2 in Brazil.
They were designed to force the country to comply with its NDC, the national decarbonization target to which every nation commits under the Paris Agreement – the main international treaty to combat global warming around the world.
The government had already reached consensus on almost all of the twenty documents, but differences in the plan for agriculture and livestock interrupted the discussions.
In the Climate Plan, each sector has objectives for reducing CO emissions2and since Brazil’s main emissions driver is deforestation, its related activities have been those that have received the most ambitious targets.
In the first version of the plan, these emissions were mainly divided into two plans: one under the main responsibility of the Ministry of the Environment and which concerned the destruction of forests in public domains and the other, under the responsibility of Agriculture, focused on agriculture.
The sector and the ministry of Carlos Fávaro began to criticize this document, because it had too rigid objectives and tried to reflect its emissions on other areas.
The solution proposed by the Ministry of the Environment was to break down emissions linked to deforestation and rethink the allocation of CO2.
The document has not yet been published in the Official Union Gazette (DOU), but people who worked on it told the Leafwith the reservation that in the approved version, emissions related to quilombola territories, settlements and non-designated areas were left from the agricultural plan and were transferred to public spaces and collective territories, which are a greater responsibility of the Department of the Environment.
A new plan was also created for deforestation on private properties and which also began to take into account reforestation activities in these areas or the recovery of degraded areas. This area is a shared responsibility between the Ministry of Environment and Agriculture.
And the agricultural sector plan has started to take into account only emissions directly linked to livestock or plantation activities, for example.
One of the criticisms leveled at agriculture was also that the plan did not provide any financial incentives for the sector.
The final version of the document, however, began to provide for economic actions to be adopted by the federal government, based on mechanisms already existing or in the implementation phase, mentioned explicitly and in detail.
There is no financial target, but there are explicit expansion, review and implementation targets related to this area.
For example: expanding rural credit, creating payment mechanisms for environmental services (such as the TFFF, the Tropical Forest Fund created by the Lula government) and evaluating possible tax revisions for the sector.
In practice, what changes is that if previously the plan only provided for the obligation to reduce deforestation and emissions, it now also includes financial compensation objectives for the sector.
In addition, the document replaced the word deforestation with removal of vegetation, thus differentiating destruction authorized by public agencies and carried out within the framework of the law, from illegal and criminal destruction.
Aloisio Lopes, secretary for climate change at the Ministry of the Environment, says that the plan aimed at deforestation in private areas provides for a series of actions, from different departments, which also include Finance and Agrarian Development, for example.
“We needed coordinated and common action, none of the organizations would have all the necessary instruments to generate incentives to accelerate the recovery of forests. We put in place a set of actions, a conjunction of efforts, each organization mobilizing its instruments, whether financial or public policies targeting family farming for example,” he said.
“It is important to have passed this stage, now we are entering a phase of implementation and monitoring of the plans, a huge package of actions that we must put in place,” he adds.
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