The Harsh Effects of Climate Change in Brazil

The harsh effects of climate change have affected the whole world through intense droughts, storms, heatwaves, rising sea levels, melting glaciers, warming oceans directly harming animals, and destroying their habitats. Specifically in Brazil, located in the upper region of South America, climate change has mainly caused the climate to get hotter and drier. The greenhouse effect of excess carbon dioxide and methane emissions makes the Amazon rainforest both hotter and drier, resulting in more wildfires. The Amazon rainforest filters approximately two billion tons of carbon out of Earth's atmosphere each year, which equals about 5 percent of worldwide greenhouse gas emissions.  As well, about 17 percent of the Amazon has been destroyed because of deforestation over the past half-century, and the rate of deforestation in Brazil is going up again. Because of this, the Amazon is losing its ability to recover from disturbances such as droughts and shortages of water, causing most of the rainforest to soon be replaced by green land. This could result in up to 90 billion tons of heat-trapping carbon dioxide being released back into the atmosphere.

Brazil has grown to become one of the largest economies in the world. Still, Brazilian citizens rank quite low in income per capita. There is a rise in the service economy, foreign investment, and exports have helped grow Brazil's Gross Domestic Product (GDP), which is 1.87 trillion.  Another issue in Brazil caused by climate change is extreme weather events such as intense droughts, mudslides, punishing rains, and flooding. These tragic events have left many dead or without homes. Brazil is committed to reducing the effects of climate change. They are taking steps to voluntarily migrate greenhouse gasses. The Kyoto Protocols were negotiated in 1997, ratified by Brazil in 2002, and entered into force in 2005. At that time, Brazil had no targets to pursue, as the Kyoto Protocol binds only developed countries to cut emissions.

Country policy

The Glasgow summit created monumental strides toward the battle against climate change. The president of Brazil, Jair Bolsonaro, however, did not attend this Summit. The major powers that did attend the conference were China, the US, the UK, the EU, Africa’s UN, etc. Together they can make an enormous impact on our world’s climate state. From this absence of Brazil from the conference came an expected, yet a vast number of outrage and backlash. Days after the summit President Bolsonaro announced his works in the reversal of our current decline of the geological climate. After the conference, he announced Brazil’s “Green Growth Plan”. This came off less as the government's efforts to help climate change and more of a publicity stunt.

Brazil, like other nations already, has made some environmental impacts like committing to the National Policy of Climate Change (PNMC). Brazil also ratified the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) in 1994 along with the Kyoto Protocol in 2002. Finally, like most of the world, Brazil’s Leadership took part in the Paris Climate Agreement, a major and historic event where almost every country on the earth signed the accords. The “Green Growth Plan” in Brazil; vowed to cut 50% of its carbon emissions by 2030. This will prove to be a challenge for Brazil because they produce 462 megatons of CO2 and that will be cut down to 231 megatons in the next 7 years. The next promise they made was to become carbon neutral by 2050. Carbon neutral is when a country has no net release of CO2 into the atmosphere by offsetting emissions. Or whatever carbon they emit they will try to balance it out by planting more trees or doing other things to remove carbon out of the atmosphere to become equal with the total amount of CO2 they're producing. The final thing they are attempting to do is to end illegal deforestation by 2080. They will also be trying to reverse deforestation in Brazil by 15%. This is a huge leap for Brazil because one of its main exports is lumber. That lumber most likely comes from the Amazon, where 60% of the rainforest is over and in Brazil's territories. This will cause some serious problems to their economy.

III.  Possible solutions

When looking at the main contributors to climate change such as the United States and China, and then looking at Brazil, Brazil only contributes a minimal amount to climate change.  Greenhouse gas emissions by Brazil are almost 3% of the annual world total. First due to cutting down trees in the Amazon rainforest, which emitted more carbon dioxide in the 2010s than it absorbed. The wealthier and more developed nations are responsible for over 50% of the world's greenhouse gas emissions. On the other hand, smaller and less developed countries such as Tuvalu, Niue, Nauru, and Kiribati, have to deal with the consequences even though they are not contributing less to climate change.

China itself emitted 9.9 billion metric tons in 2019 with the primary source of CO2 emissions as fossil fuels. China is also one of the largest importers of oil, which contributes a large amount of CO2 emissions through the use of motor vehicles.  Although China produces a large amount of CO2 emissions they plan to reduce it in the future by switching to using more renewable energy sources and natural gas.  The second-largest contributor is the United States. They produced 4.7 billion metric tons of carbon dioxide in 2019. The U.S. government tried to reduce the reliance on coal for electricity generation but the country has become a major producer of crude oil. Tuvalu, a small country with only 12,000 people, and the country with the lowest carbon footprint on the planet is suffering from climate change as a backlash from other countries contributing to climate change. Their current carbon footprint rests at zero. The rising tidewaters have concerned the fate of the country.  

One important non-governmental organization in Brazil is the Florestas do Futuro which was founded in 2004 to unite civil society, companies, landowners, and governments in collaborative projects of forest restoration. Florestas do Futuro is divided into 3 main areas of work, carbon sequestration, biodiversity maintenance, and hydric resource preservation. Since the group first began more than 40 million trees have been planted, restoring 23 hectares of forest land, and helping to remove more than 6.5 million tons of CO2 from the atmosphere.

As stated before, Brazil is not one of the main contributors to climate change but is receiving the backlash.  The amazon forest, which consumes more carbon dioxide than produces, is becoming hotter and drier which is causing more wildfires and overall hurting the health of Brazil. We propose that other countries of the world follow our lead in the Green Growth Plan. Brazil promises to become carbon neutral, to fully create a better world, we need to first fix our problems before we start to reverse the effects of the climate that we caused. Deforestation is also a huge problem and we need to take action now, we need more trees that will help replenish our world for the future.