MercoPress, en Español

Montevideo, October 12th 2024 - 18:14 UTC

 

 

Brazil: Lula announces creation of National Climate Authority

Wednesday, September 11th 2024 - 09:57 UTC
Full article 23 comments
The Climate Authority initiative had been discussed after Lula won the 2022 and environmental crises in Rio Grande do Sul and Amazonas have resurfaced it. The Climate Authority initiative had been discussed after Lula won the 2022 and environmental crises in Rio Grande do Sul and Amazonas have resurfaced it.

Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva announced Tuesday that he intended to create a National Climate Authority, Agencia Brasil reported. The new agency's mission would be to deal with extreme natural phenomena. Lula made these remarks in Manaus before dozens of environmental experts, as 61 of the 62 municipalities in the State of Amazonas face an emergency due to the drought.

“Our goal is to establish the conditions for expanding and accelerating public policies, starting with the National Plan for Tackling Extreme Climate Risks. Our goal should be to adapt and prepare to face these phenomena. To this end, we will establish a Climate Authority and a Technical-Scientific Committee to support and coordinate the implementation of this plan by the federal government,” Lula explained before dozens of mayors as well as Governor Wilson Lima.

The Climate Authority, which would function as a federal agency, with its own resources and staff, is a project that has been mentioned since Lula's election, back in 2022, and which began to be debated during the government transition. Subsequent environmental disasters in Rio Grande del Sur and now in Amazonas have unearthed the initiative.

“At the moment, we are experiencing a perverse combination of a number of factors which, combined, are creating this situation. The first of these is the problem of climate change, which is changing the rainfall regime, which is changing the period of drought and dryness, as you are observing. Some hours more and others less. Alongside this, we have the problem of deforestation, of fires, which ends up aggravating the situation even more,” Environment and Climate Change Minister Marina Silva pointed out.

Fires have already affected 1.1 million hectares of primary forest, proving that the rainforest is no longer immune to fire. “This is proof that the vegetation is losing moisture, and this is a phenomenon that we still don't know how to deal with,” she added.

Silva also spoke about the creation of a Global Fund for the protection of tropical forests, which should make US$ 300 million available for environmental preservation. According to her, it should be operational from next year, when Brazil will host the United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP30) in Belém.

Also Tuesday, Lula and a group of cabinet members toured the communities of São Sebastião do Curumitá and Campo Novo, in the municipality of Tefé, and Manaquiri, in Manaus, to talk to residents and announce measures to combat drought in the region hitting around 310 million people.

Lula also pledged to speed up negotiations and discussions around the reconstruction of the BR-319 federal highway, which links Manaus, in Amazonas, to Porto Velho, in Rondônia. The paving of the highway has been the subject of controversy for decades, as it crosses an environmentally sensitive region of the Amazon rainforest.

Also at the meeting with mayors, the president signed a decree setting up the Integrated Multi-Agency Federal Operational Coordination Center, linked to the National Integrated Fire Management Committee, which has to monitor actions to control and combat forest fires. The federal government, in coordination with the governments of the states of the Legal Amazon, will set up containment barriers in the regions recording the highest number of fires and forest fires in the biome at this time.

The number of fires in the Legal Amazon this year alone has exceeded 63,000 cases up to the beginning of this month, in the first year of the historical series measured by the National Institute for Space Research (INPE).

Categories: Environment, Politics, Brazil.

Top Comments

Disclaimer & comment rules
  • Pugol-H

    Braz
    Again you miss the point, energy generation isn’t the problem here, it’s only a small part of Brazil’s emissions.

    As to the claim of ‘ protection of biomes’, the evidence does not support that claim, it contradicts its.

    Here have a read of some data, you know facts!

    https://climaesociedade.org/en/changes-in-land-use-account-for-48-of-brazilian-emissions/

    ‘changes in land use, which include deforestation in all the Brazilian biomes, account for 48% of the total national emissions, followed by agriculture and livestock, with 27% of the gross emissions of the country’

    ‘land use total’ for Brazil is 75% of Brazil’s total emissions and showing no signs of falling.

    Whilst you continue to blither on about ‘power generation’.

    Avoiding the subject where you have no answer, as usual.

    Sep 11th, 2024 - 02:08 pm +2
  • Pugol-H

    Braz
    Wishful thinking at best.

    There is far more ice in the Antarctic than the Arctic and it is warming almost as fast.

    What does that melting do to the ‘tilt’?

    However, parts of British Antarctic Territory, like the Antarctic peninsula, will become habitable.

    Shogun
    CO2 allows the atmosphere to retain more heat, and it only takes a very small amount to do it.

    Currently the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere has shot past the 400ppm level, that’s ‘parts per million’, compared to a per-industrial level of around 300ppm.

    If there were no CO2 in earths atmosphere the average surface temperature would be -20C.

    Go figure what happens when it reaches 500ppm

    Oh and we’ve just sent 650 Lightweight Multirole Missiles to Ukraine, it seem that like NLAWs and StarStreak missiles, they are very effective.

    Don’t think they will let the Ukrainians use the long rang missiles like Storm Shadows against targets deep inside Russia, but the Ukrainians have developed long range drones of their own capable of deep strikes.

    Where Russia has nowhere near enough air defence capability to defend everywhere.

    They don’t even have enough men to push the Ukrainians out of Kursk and maintain their offensive in the Donbas, where they are losing 2,000 men a day.

    Sep 14th, 2024 - 12:36 pm +2
  • no time for you

    here we go, another useless agency/authority to mislead those who can not justify the existing ones (IBAMA, ICMBIO among a probable long list sponsored by tax payers...) failure to comply with their basic role for decades... - either ways, why they keep promoting thermo-plants (coal, diesel, gas powered...) while their recently ideas to expand hydro (and quickly destroy more wildlife, besides favoring usual construction companies, the ones who confessed money corruption to the same political parties in power right now...) - embarassing....

    Sep 11th, 2024 - 11:24 am +1
Read all comments

Commenting for this story is now closed.
If you have a Facebook account, become a fan and comment on our Facebook Page!