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hatrack

(59,442 posts)
Thu Jun 4, 2020, 06:38 AM Jun 2020

Bolsonaro's Govt. Cuts Climate Budget 40%; National Climate Change Fund Spent Zero In 2019, 2020

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Funding for activities under Brazil's national climate change plan has also been cut, from R$436 million for 2019 to R$247 million for 2020, a drop of more than 40%, INESC research showed. The climate plan, led by the environment ministry, is aimed at meeting Brazil's international commitment under the 2015 Paris Agreement to cut its greenhouse gas emissions by 37% from 2005 levels by 2025 and an "intended reduction" of 43% by 2030.

Measures in the plan include boosting renewable energy, cutting illegal deforestation in the Amazon to zero by 2030, and restoring and reforesting 12 million hectares of forests in the next decade - targets that were set in 2015 by the government of left-wing president Dilma Rousseff. Yet the National Climate Change Fund, a key financial instrument for implementing the government climate plan, spent nothing in 2019 nor so far in 2020, according to INESC.

And the Amazon Fund, into which Norway and Germany had been paying money for forest protection, has been paralysed since January 2019 after Brazil's Ministry of Environment changed the fund's governance structure and donors withheld further cash.

Alessandra Cardoso, INESC policy advisor, said the shrinking of the budget for climate measures and forest protection was "in line with" Bolsonaro's speeches and administrative decisions such as replacing technical officials with military personnel. "All of this constitutes an emptying of environmental policy with visible consequences," she said. For Suely Araújo, a political scientist at the University of Brasília and a former president of Ibama, the reduction in resources to tackle climate change points to a lack of government interest in the problem. "The budget is a mirror of government priorities. If the money is decreasing, it means that the government is paying less attention to that topic, which is very worrying," said Araújo.

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https://news.trust.org/item/20200602141709-v3eqi/

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