BAt least 22 people have died in 8 Brazilian states due to lack of planning for the rainy season between November and the first week of December. Around 22,800 people have been displaced, while another 3,171 are homeless due to the raings. The survey was done by CNN based on data released by the state Civil Defenses. 

The states of Santa Catarina, Paraná, Sergipe, Espírito Santo, Bahia, São Paulo, Minas Gerais, and Rio de Janeiro suffer from landslides, floods, and power outages as a result of atypical rainfall volumes and planning neglect from the authorities for the extreme events that increase in frequency with climate change. 

The month of November was marked by unusual weather episodes for the period, with atypical cold at the beginning of the month, followed by heavy rain, anticipating the summer rainy season. The forecast for the month of December is that storms will maintain a high volume and temperatures will rise throughout Brazil.

A survey by the Natural Disasters Observatory showed that, in the last 10 years, the deaths caused by lack of prevention to excessive rainfall and its consequences in Brazil totaled 1,756. The lives lost by floods until September this year already reached 457, which represents more than 25% of the total deaths in the decade. 

• At the end of 2021, the state of Bahia suffered another climate emergency.
• In February and March 2022, Petrópolis and the mountains regions of Rio de Janeiro were hit by an atypical amount of rain. 
• In April, it was the turn of the state of São Paulo. 
• In June, torrential rains hit Pernambuco state. 

Despite this, Bolsonaro cut 99% of the budget allocated to natural disasters for 2023. The Ministry of Regional Development has reduced the budget for emergency disaster mitigation from R$2.8 million to a meager R$25,000. For the execution of projects and works of slope containment in urban areas, there was a cut of 94% of the resource, from R$ 53.9 million to R$ 2.7 million. “The amount that was destined was already small compared to the amount necessary for mitigation works. So, what was already too little, became even less,” points out Professor Pedro Luiz Côrtes from USP’s Institute of Energy and Environment.

In addition to avoidable deaths, climate collapse also brings significant economic losses. A survey by Swiss Re estimated losses from extreme weather events occurring in 2022 worldwide at $260 billion.

The new Congress is not only further to the right – it has also become more anti-environmental. The Institute for Democracy and Sustainability (IDS) did a survey through its Green Panel that identified the growth of the anti-environmental caucus and the reduction of the environmental caucus. The percentage of mostly anti-environmental federal deputies rose from 37% to 42.6%, while the percentage of green federal deputies fell from 30% to 27%. The Senate loses two votes aligned with environmental issues and decreases its power to avoid setbacks on the agenda.

André Lima, coordinator of the IDS Green Panel evaluates, however, that “there is room to increase adherence to the environmental vote, working on the dialogue with the caucuses”.

In the specific case of the Legal Amazon region, the IDS report assesses that “the voices that will speak on behalf of Amazonian voters have low adhesion to the climate and environmental agendas”.

A survey by Amazônia Real indicates that the nine states in the region will see the advance of anti-environmental and anti-indigenous agendas and that Bolsonarism has been consolidated by the popular vote. In the state houses of the Legal Amazon, the five parties with the most representation, starting in 2023, will be: MDB (29 seats), União Brasil (26), Republicans (24), PL (22).

The level of greenhouse gas emissions in Brazil had in 2021 the highest increase since 2003, according to the Climate Observatory’s Greenhouse Gas Emissions Estimates System (SEEG). The growth last year reached 12.2% and was driven by deforestation, energy, and agriculture and cattle raising.

This is also the fourth consecutive year that Brazil has recorded an increase in emissions. The table places the country as the fifth largest emitter worldwide, with 4% of the total, behind China (23.7% of the total), the United States (12.9%), India (6.5%), and Russia (4.2%).

According to Tasso Azevedo, coordinator of the SEEG, this ten-year balance shows that Brazil has had a lost decade to control its climate pollution. “Since the regulation of the National Policy on Climate Change, in 2010, we have been slipping. Not only have we failed to reduce our emissions consistently, but we have increased them in recent years, and significantly.

The year 2022 has not ended, but the Amazon is already experiencing its most devastating calendar year in records. According to the DETER/INPE system, the accumulated deforestation alerts between January 1st and October 21st is 9,277 km2. With two months until the end of this year, the total area affected by deforestation in 2022 already exceeds the total of the worst year of records so far, 2019, when the alerts totaled 9,178 km2.

Marcio Astrini, executive secretary of the Climate Observatory, says that deforestation in the Amazon is out of control and the scenario for the environmental crime “has never been so favorable.” “There is no action by the federal government to stop deforestation in the Amazon. Decreasing it is not a concern of the Bolsonaro government,” he explained.

In addition, the Amazon also set a new record for deforestation in September, with a high of almost 50% compared to the previous year.

Data from the National Institute for Space Research (INPE) released on June 1st showed that environmental devastation continues to grow in the country. The Amazon, with 2,287 outbreaks of forest fires, had the highest number of fires since 2004 and was 96% higher than last year.

In the Cerrado, the increase was 35% compared to May 2021, with 3,578 fires, the highest number since 1998, when measurements started. The tendency, according to specialists, is to get worse, since the most intense fire season has not yet arrived. Most of the burning, according to scholars, is done by the agricultural sector.

The torrential rains in the state of Pernambuco between May 25 and 29 have caused, so far, 109 deaths and are being considered the biggest tragedy in the state since the 1960s.

Most of the deaths were due to landslides, which, according to experts, could have been avoided with planning and public policies, especially for housing.

“We know that there is a housing deficit, but it is a deficit that needs to be solved  as quickly as possible, because if not, every year we are going to have this problem, we are going to play Russian roulette, like  ‘2023 is coming with the rains, who is going to die now? ,” said Professor Hernande Pereira da Silva, coordinator of the Institute for Risk and Disaster Reduction of Pernambuco (IRRD).

The climate disaster also left more than 6,000 people homeless.

“These are the facts. I ask you to send it to friends who live abroad.” That’s how President Jair Bolsonaro rallied his troops in a video published on his official Twitter profile. The video narrated in English with false information about Brazilian environmental policy and deforestation in the country.

Bolsonaro claimed that the material tells “the truth of environmental preservation, when comparing Brazil to the world.” Among the lies present in the video is the claim that the country is “extremely preserved” and that it has 85% of its energy coming from renewable sources.

In the first quarter of 2022, the Amazon registered a new deforestation record, for example, according to monitoring data from the National Institute for Space Research (Inpe) itself.

Six Brazilian civil society organizations presented to the international community a denunciation of the risks involved in the bill 191/2020, which authorizes the economic exploitation of indigenous lands.

In the speech read at a meeting at the United Nations by Gustavo Huppes, from the NGO Conectas, also representing the Instituto Socioambiental (ISA), the Articulation of Indigenous Peoples of Brazil (APIB), the Maíra Institute, Kowit and the Climate Observatory, the group stated that the proposal “is a direct attack on indigenous peoples and an outright violation of the constitutional right to their territories and the international obligations assumed by Brazil, such as ILO Convention 169.”

Bill 191 had its urgency regime approved by the House of Representatives on March 9 and it might go to a vote without going through the House committees, in the first half of April.

In the same week, meteorological stations recorded record highs at the Earth’s poles, indicating a possible effect of climate change, according to experts.

In Antarctica, at the French-Italian research base Concordia, located at the C-Dome region, the recorded temperature was minus 11.5ºC, 40ºC higher than expected for the period.

In the Arctic the record was a little lower, 30ºC warmer than expected for this time of year. In an article on the phenomenon, MetSul’s portal gathered comments and analyses from international researchers and climatologists about the record temperature increase in the regions.

At least five people died, two are missing and 574 were left homeless due to the heavy downpour of rains in Petrópolis (RJ), a little more than a month after the storm that left more than 200 dead in the city.

In two and a half hours, it rained 208 millimeters. In February, the downpour was of 259 millimeters in a little over six hours.

According to the Civil Defense, the rains caused landslides in areas still blocked and even interrupted the search for those missing from previous storms.

The United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has released the second part of its 6th report, focusing on impacts and solutions to curb climate change. The first part, released in August 2021, highlighted the impact of human action on the Earth’s climate system.

The O Eco website made a thorough analysis of the main impacts expected for Brazil. If the levels of greenhouse gas emissions remain high, the Northeast region may have a reduction in rainfall of up to 22%, becoming a semi-desert region, and “droughts in the Amazon region associated with deforestation and fires, could transform the humid forest into a savanna region,” indicates the article. Among the other impacts of climate change for Brazil are lethal heat waves, floods and the colapse of agriculture.

“Brazil is not adapting to climate change. There is the National Adaptation Plan, but it hasn’t been implemented yet. Look at the issue of reforestation of hillsides, which is an adaptation technique to avoid extreme climate events, if it had occurred in Petrópolis, we wouldn’t have had this disaster that we saw. Any climate adaptation mechanism that does not take into account the functioning of ecosystems is obviously doomed to failure,” said Paulo Artaxo, one of the researchers involved in the report.

In a press statement about his talks with Hungarian President János Árder, Jair Bolsonaro lied once again about environmental conservation in Brazil by claiming that 63% of the country’s territory is preserved. 

According to data from the National Institute for Space Research (Inpe), in January, the Amazon hit a historical record of deforestation for the period, losing an area equivalent to 43,000 soccer fields.

Bolsonaro also questioned the country’s image as an “international villain” in the environmental agenda. “I had the opportunity to tell him what the Amazon represents for Brazil and for the world. And many times the information about this region reaches other places in a very distorted way, as if we were the great villains in on forest conservation and its destruction, something that does not exist,” he said.

Since 2019, under his administration, the country has registered successive records of deforestation in the Amazon, and became a constant target of international pressure around the issue.

The Rede Sustentabilidade party (Sustainability Network) filed an Argument of Violation of a Fundamental Precept (ADPF) 934 with the Supreme Court (STF), asking the federal government to “immediately provide the allocation and execution of sufficient funds” to continue monitoring the deforestation of the Cerrado savanna conducted by the National Institute for Space Research (INPE), as reported by Conjur.

In early January, Inpe reported that it only has funds until April to maintain the 20 professionals that make up the team responsible for the daily monitoring and annual balances of deforestation in the biome, at a cost of R$ 2.5 million a year (US$ 500,000).

Considered the most threatened biome in Brazil, Cerrado has suffered the impact of the advancing soy and cattle agribusiness. In 2021, the region reached the highest deforestation rate since 2015, according to the monitoring by Inpe.

Brazil left the 26th United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP26) how it entered: discredited internationally due to its environmental policy.

Germany and Norway, the main donors of the Amazon Fund, paralyzed since 2019 due to poor governance from the Ministry of Environment and the accelerated destruction of the biome, are waiting for an indication of how the commitments made by the country at the conference will be implemented. Until this happens, the resources remain frozen.

The Brazilian commitment to reduce 50% of the country’s greenhouse gas emissions by 2030, for example, is not only insufficient, but also anachronistic, since it uses a calculation baseline from 2005.

The research institute WRI Brasil reaffirmed the insufficient character of the Brazilian goals: “Brazil reached the end of this COP26 with the same level of ambition that it committed to in Paris six years ago.”

“The humanity has lost”. That’s how Carlos Bocuhy, president of the Brazilian Institute For Environmental Protection (PROAM) defined the commitments made by countries at the end of the 26th United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP26) in the face of the current climate emergency, in an article for the O Eco portal.

One of the main focuses of COP26, which brought together representatives from almost 200 countries, was to establish a series of measures to limit global warming to 1.5° C by 2030. UN also considers the Glasgow Climate Pact signed at the conference as insufficient for the task ahead.

During an official speech at the UN Climate Change Conference (COP26), the Minister of the Environment, Joaquim Leite, said “where there is a lot of forest there is also a lot of poverty”.

The statement shocked environmentalists and opposition members of parliament, who highlighted it as an indication that Bolsonaro’s  project for the environment remains intact, despite promises of change. “This statement reveals the mentality of the government is from the 70s of the last century: to deforest, for them, is synonymous with development. As it is a government that despises science, they can’t accept that this vision has been overcome by everything science has shown,” declared congressman Alessandro Molon (PSB-RJ) to Jamil Chade’s column.

In the same speech, Leite announced that “the green future has already begun in Brazil. Two days after the minister’s declaration, Inpe released that the Amazon beat the historical record of deforestation alerts for the month, adding an area of 877 km². Throughout the event, the government has ignored the advance of deforestation in the country.

Despite being numerous, the official Brazilian delegation at the UN Climate Change Conference (COP26) drew attention for the complete absence of organized civil society and of the indigenous peoples of Brazil.

According to Jamil Chade’s column, the delegation includes “lobbyists who try to show the ‘green side’ of Brazil, governors, mayors, deputy mayors, deputies, senators, industry representatives, in addition to spokespersons for national agriculture. There are even names “without any explanations”, indicated the column.

President Jair Bolsonaro, who did not attend COP26, explained his absence in a brief note from the Special Secretariat of Social Communication (Secom). “Due to agenda reasons, the President of the Republic will participate in COP26 by means of a video, recorded and already sent to the event organizers,” the text says.

A study conducted by the international think tank Carbon Brief places Brazil in fourth place in the ranking of the most polluting countries in the world, considering the historical accumulation of carbon gas emissions from 1850 to 2021. The survey includes data on emissions from fossil fuel burning, changes in land use, deforestation and cement production. 

In Brazil, most pollution comes from the clearing of forests and the use of land for agriculture and cattle ranching, two major vectors of the current environmental devastation underway in the country under the Bolsonaro administration. Heard by BBC Brazil, the executive secretary of the Climate Observatory, Marcio Astrini, commented on the history of emissions in the country. “If you take the last 30 years, 73% of the planet’s emissions are in the energy sector. If you take the last 30 years in Brazil, 55% of emissions are from deforestation. If you include emissions from Brazilian livestock, we reach 80%”, he said.

Brazil lost 21 million hectares of the Amazon between 1997 and 2020, according to a study by the Amazon Environmental Research Institute (IPAM). In 23 years, the region known as Legal Amazon lost 8% of its public forests and 75% of the deforested areas became pasture, emitting 10.2 gigatonnes of CO2, the equivalent of five years of greenhouse gas emissions in the country.

According to Paulo Moutinho, from IPAM, land grabbing is “a risk factor for the planet’s climate balance” and has intensified over the last ten years.

On the eve of the 26th United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP-26), the Climate Observatory analysed the bill that alters the National Policy on Climate Change (PNMC), approved last week by the Federal Senate. 

As a conclusion, the organization points out that the proposed goals for carbon emissions reductions in Brazil are as insufficient as the ones presented by the government in the update of the Brazilian Nationally Determined Contribution (NDC) at the end of 2020.  According to the OC, both reduce the Brazilian climate ambition for the next decades. The observatory explains that this “creative accounting” consists in maintaining the percentage of emissions cuts promised, while changing the basis of calculation.

The “creative accounting” strategy hinders Brazil’s capacity to comply with the Paris Agreement objectives, one of the COP-26 agendas.