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Brazil's carbon challenge: Brazil's carbon footprint comes mainly from land uses, not energy.

Article Excerpt
At the opening ceremony of last year's international climate conference in Poznan, Poland, United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon praised Brazil for having built "one of the greenest economies in the world." South America's largest country uses renewable energy on a scale (nearly half of total energy consumption) that other major economies can only dream about.

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And yet, according to the World Resources Institute, Brazil was the world's fourth largest emitter of greenhouse gases in 2005 (the most recent data year). Its own government's energy plan, published earlier this year, envisages a tripling of emissions from the country's electricity-generating sector over the next 10 years.

These apparently contradictory facts can be explained by three essential elements that give Brazil a unique profile in tackling the global climate challenge: hydropower, sugar-based ethanol, and, most of all, deforestation in the Amazon.

The big picture of Brazil's climate change contribution is this: historic decisions, based not on climate concerns but on factors such as resource availability and the wish for energy independence, led the country to a relatively low dependency on fossil fuels. Hydroelectric dams dominate the supply of electricity (accounting for some 90 percent of domestically generated power), and Brazilian sugarcane estates have been powering vehicles for 30 years. Unlike every other top emitter, energy plays a relatively small role in Brazil's official greenhouse gas account.

What puts Brazil into the big league of emitters is the use made of its vast land area: land-use change, principally but not exclusively Amazon deforestation, accounts for some 75 percent of annual carbon dioxide emissions. Agriculture makes up an exceptionally high proportion of total greenhouse gases: some 25 percent, mainly methane from cattle and nitrous oxide from farm wastes and fertilizers. The power sector, by contrast, accounts for just 3 percent of greenhouse gas emissions, compared with a global average of 27 percent.

In fact, the green credentials of Brazilian energy production come with complexities and questions attached, which are explored below. From this big picture, however, it becomes clear why controlling deforestation in the Amazon is at the heart of the country's climate change policies. There are huge challenges involved, not least overcoming contradictions in the government's policies that often seem to undermine its own ambitions to protect the Amazon. The prize, however, for the world as well as for Brazil, is enormous: at relatively low cost, a significant source of carbon emissions can be reduced dramatically, and an ecosystem of incalculable worth to humanity for reasons other than climate can at last be valued and preserved.

Cutting the Cutting

For years, Brazil resisted setting any firm numerical targets for reducing deforestation in the Amazon, in large part out of reluctance to be held to specific policies in the region by international organizations. Sovereignty over the Amazon is a highly sensitive issue in Brazil and conspiracy theories abound about plots to take it out of the country's control. (Alleged conspirators range from Greenpeace to Prince Charles.)

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This made Brazil's National Climate Change Plan, published on December 1,2008 and presented at the...

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