Brazil publishes first global ‘roadmap’ for phasing out fossil fuels

Entre as medidas que o Brasil sugere, está a urgência de os produtores de petróleo e gás reduzirem a fogueira e a liberação de gás nos locais de extração. Fotografia: Eremeychuk Leonid/Alamy.

Todos os países podem começar a romper sua dependência de combustíveis fósseis agora, sem precisar esperar por novas tecnologias ou mudanças econômicas, disse o governo brasileiro antes de uma cúpula global sobre clima.

Brazil, the host of last year’s UN climate conference, set out the world’s first global “roadmap” for phasing out fossil fuels on Tuesday, showing that countries could boost their economies and pull people out of poverty while breaking the link with coal, oil and gas.

But Joeri Rogelj, a professor of climate science and policy at Imperial College London, said that although the Brazilian roadmaps represented a step forward, they were limited.

André Corrêa do Lago, Brazil’s president of the Cop30 summit, said the roadmaps were intended to help move the annual UN Cops away from their previous focus on negotiating global agreements to tackle the climate crisis, and on to implementing the targets that had already been agreed.

Cop31 takes place in Antalya, Turkey, this month.

He said the roadmaps should be taken up by ministries of finance, transportation, energy and infrastructure to work on how they could be implemented in each country.

O Brasil sediou a cúpula Cop30 no último novembro na cidade costeira de Belém, na floresta amazônica, onde surgiu uma disputa amarga sobre se o conjunto final de resoluções deveria incluir compromissos sobre combustíveis fósseis.

Como um compromisso, a presidência concordou em produzir dois roteiros, um sobre “transição para longe dos combustíveis fósseis nos sistemas energéticos de maneira justa, ordenada e equitativa” e o outro sobre interromper e reverter a desflorestação.

View image in fullscreenAn illegal mining camp in the Amazon rainforest in Suriname. Photograph: Iván Valencia/APThese roadmaps are separate from similarly named plans from governments that met after Cop30 at a conference in Santa Marta, Colombia, in April, to discuss the transition away from fossil fuels.

At that conference, nearly 60 countries formed a new “coalition of the willing”, separate to Cops, to set out their own national roadmaps to phase out fossil fuels.

Several countries have since produced national plans, including Germany, France and the Netherlands.

The roadmaps produced by governments under the Santa Marta initiative are much more specific and prescriptive than Brazil’s, as each of those is written by the national government responsible for implementing the policies recommended.

The Brazilian roadmaps only set out steps that are possible. They are not binding, they contain no deadlines or milestones for actions, and they leave it to countries themselves to “diagnose” their degree of dependence on fossil fuels and select steps to reduce it.

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Ver imagem em tela cheia André Corrêa do Lago na COP30 em Belém no último novembro. Fotografia: Anderson Coelho/Reuters Entre as medidas que o Brasil sugere, está a urgência de os produtores de petróleo e gás reduzirem a queima e a liberação de gás nos locais de extração.

Methane is a greenhouse gas 80 times more powerful than carbon dioxide, so this would have an immediate impact. Other steps are for countries to reduce their subsidies to fossil fuel use or production, and building up renewable generation.

O roteiro sobre desmatamento observa as grandes somas que se espera serem necessárias para ajudar países pobres com áreas densamente florestadas, como a Amazônia, as florestas tropicais do Congo e as florestas tropicais do Sudeste Asiático, que estão sob ameaça de incêndios e da exploração do óleo de palma.

The deforestation roadmap also notes the importance of regulating trade between forested countries and consumer countries. At present, there are few trade checks to stop unscrupulous companies from selling goods from deforested areas.

In some cases, deforestation has appeared to be condoned or encouraged by local or even national administrations. Indonesia is being sued by civil society groups for “gross negligence” over the record-breaking fires over the last few months that have cleared swathes of forest and destroyed wildlife habitats, most likely to be replaced by palm oil plantations.

Brazil was able to publish the roadmaps after its president, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, won a fourth election term just over a week ago. In the last four years under Lula, deforestation rates have fallen by about 70%.

His defeated opponent Flávio Bolsonaro, son of the jailed ex-president Jair Bolsonaro, had been expected if elected to return to his father’s policies of rampant exploitation of the Amazon rainforest.