Last week, Brazil’s Senate approved a project that regulates the Brazilian carbon credits market aimed at reducing greenhouse gas emissions in the country. Senator Leila Barros (PDT, Federal District) responded to the ruralist group and excluded the agribusiness sector from the obligations provided for by the Brazilian Greenhouse Gas Emissions Trading System (SBCE, in Portuguese).
The project, which will be discussed in the Chamber of Deputies, was criticized by social and popular movements from the Amazonian region due to the lack of safeguards for Indigenous rights and traditional peoples who depend on the biome and are already affected by fraudulent emission compensation projects in their territories. Another problem highlighted was the fact that agriculture was not included. This sector alone is responsible for 75% of methane emissions in Brazil, one of the main greenhouse gases, alongside carbon.
One of the main names cited in discussions about carbon credits in the country is Guarany Osório. He has a PhD in Public Administration and Government from Getúlio Vargas Foundation (FGV, in Portuguese) and believes the best alternative would be to keep the agribusiness sector part of the project. Despite this, he classified the approval as a positive advance that should help Brazil reduce emissions.
“The Amazon is full of complexity. It is necessary to look at and give a voice to the different populations living there. The process of listening has to be done from the bottom up," the expert said.
How does this model work?
The regulation approved by the Senate determines that Brazil creates public governance to establish the official carbon credit market, which sets up a limit for companies that emit 10,000 or more tons of carbon per year and allows the trading of emission rights licenses.
"There will be an emission limit for everyone. At the end of a certain period, all companies will present a quota for each ton they emit. The project creates the whole governance to establish a carbon market that sets an emissions limit and allows the trading of emission rights licenses,” says Guarany Osório.
In a hypothetical situation, a company that releases 10,000 tons of carbon into the atmosphere every year would have to reduce emissions, for instance, by 10%. To meet the target, it will be able to buy carbon credits issued by companies that have reduced their emissions.
In the document “Opinion of the People”, available here, 28 popular civil society organizations such as unions, social movements and representatives of traditional peoples and communities state that the regulation of this market cannot rely solely on experts, politicians and representatives of the economic sectors that are interested in it.
"[It should be different] because it is not just the construction of a market niche that is at stake, but the guarantee that human rights will not be violated, as well as the protection of environmental integrity, which, in turn, is irreducible to carbon, encompassing other kinds of knowledge and ways of life interdependent with nature,” warns the document.
Some of the signatories include the World March of Women, Landless Rural Workers Movement (MST), Movement of Artisanal Fishermen and Fisherwomen (MPP), Pastoral Land Commission (CPT), Popular Peasant Movement (MCP) and the Institute of Socioeconomic Studies (Inesc).
Source of violations, the “parallel” carbon market worries movements
According to the project approved by the Senate, the official greenhouse gas market will be linked to the Brazilian Greenhouse Gas Emissions Trading System (SBCE). But unregulated transactions, made in the so-called voluntary carbon market, may continue to exist, which is a cause for concern among popular and social organizations in the Amazon.
The People's Opinion states that, of the 69 voluntary market projects available for evaluation, 11 present “total overlap” with areas of collective use; 22 overlap with public areas and 23 are developed in private areas. The data were collected by a survey carried out by the law firm Hernandez Lerner e Miranda, based on the Verra5 certification platform, the main platform operating in Brazil.
"To keep the voluntary market and, at the same time, maintain the regulated markets leaves us with a pollution market where rotten carbon credits circulate, due to the high social cost of voluntary credits and their association with fraud investigated nationally and internationally. Thus, aiming to facilitate compliance with pollution targets applied to companies, the proposal reiterates the vicious cycle of harassment, expulsions and forced displacements associated with the installation of voluntary carbon projects that have been denounced by so many communities, in addition to reinforcing an outdated conservationist approach that has no place in Brazil,” reads the text.
For the FGV carbon market specialist, land regularization – and the consequent titling of quilombola, Indigenous, extractive and agrarian reform lands – is the key to solving the problem. "This is important to improve people's lives. So, you have to invest in solving the most essential problem, which is land regularization, in addition to involving the actors who live there,” stated Osório.
“There are people in the forests, and these people must have their dignity acknowledged, besides having their rights respected, hard-won rights that must be protected,” he added.
