Brazil pledges big emissions cut

Brazil has become the first major developing country to announce 36.1 to 38.9 per cent cut in carbon emissions by 2020, putting pressure on developed nations to do the same, reports Chetan Chauhan. See graphic

Updated on: Nov 16, 2009, 24:36:04 IST

Hindustan Times | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

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Brazil has become the first major developing country to announce 36.1 to 38.9 per cent cut in carbon emissions by 2020, putting pressure on developed nations to do the same.

The cut will be in accordance with the projected emission figures of the South American nation for 2020.

Other developing nations such as India and China have announced national action plans, but officially haven’t set any voluntary emission cut targets for 2020.

“It is voluntary and not binding commitment,” Dilma Rousseff, president Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva’s chief of staff, said in Sao Paulo on late Friday.

He expressed hope that the move would help break deadlock in negotiations for the global summit at Copenhagen that gets underway on December 7.

“Brazil is aiming at having a political statement on climate change at Copenhagen, with the US as a party to it, even if there is no treaty,” said Shirish Sinha, head of climate division at WWF-India.

The European Union has sought a political statement at Copenhagen. The US has ruled out accepting any cuts until the Senate passes a domestic emission law.

Developing nations, including Brazil and India, are allowed increase in their carbon emissions, under Kyoto Protocol, without any binding commitment to reduce them. The protocol term for it is business as usual scenario.

“China will reduce its emissions,” Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao had said at the UN in September, without stipulating a target. The fastest growing Asian economy is expected to announce an emission cut action ahead of the Copenhagen summit.

India, too, could do the same. “It (emission reduction) ranges between 13 and 15 per cent from business as usual scenario,” said a government official, on condition of anonymity.

“What Brazil has done is not unusual,” India’s climate negotiator Pradipto Ghosh said.

“It is up to each country to announce what they want to do for climate mitigation. We have National Action Plan on Climate Change…”

Reducing emissions is much easier for Brazil than for India and China, where fossil fuel consumption is the biggest source of emissions.

Brazil’s proposal contains no specific cuts for industry. It means that much of the reduction will come from its vast forestry and farm sector. In 2008-09, the deforestation of the vast Amazon forests has been the lowest in the last 21 years.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Chetan Chauhan
Chetan Chauhan is the National Affairs Editor looking into all aspects of news and features from across India. A Chevening scholar with over three decades of experience in reporting and news management, Chetan has extensively covered all important aspects of the social sector, political economy, environment and climate change nationally and internationally. He did a journalism course at the Reuters Institute of Journalism in Oxford and Digital Media training at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. He started as a reporter with The Statesman in 1996 and joined the Hindustan Times in 2000 in the metro bureau covering environment, crime and Delhi politics. He covered hot local news, from the Jessica Lal murder case to the rebellion of Delhi Congress MLAs against then Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit, to the replacement of toxic vehicle fuel with cleaner compressed natural gas (CNG) in the national capital. Some of his stories on air pollution became part of the Supreme Court’s landmark MC Mehta versus Government of India case in the National Capital Region (NCR), forcing the government to take corrective measures. As part of the national political bureau since 2004, he covered important central sectors such as environment, education, social justice, labour, rural development, water resources, renewable energy, agriculture, broadcasting and the Planning Commission for more than a decade producing several exclusive and investigative breaking stories. His specialisation is the environment, having covered at least a dozen United Nations global conferences on climate change, biodiversity and wildlife including climate summits in Paris, Copenhagen and Bali. He also covered India’s two five-year plans ---11th and 12th and reported on drafting and execution of right based laws such as Right to Education, Right to Information and rural job guarantee law, MG-NREGA, now being introduced in new format as VG-RAM-G Act. He has in-depth knowledge of social sector issues. He was one of the first to report on tigers vanishing from Sariska and Panna wildlife reserves in 2004 and 2008, respectively, leading to the setting up of the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) and the introduction of stringent penal provisions for poaching. He has written extensively on the rising human-animal conflict in India and the degradation of India’s biodiversity hotspots because of mining and other activities. Since 2004, Chetan has covered Parliament comprehensively and participated in training on the nuanced coverage of Parliament proceedings. He has travelled extensively across India to cover national and provincial elections since 1998, especially in the Hindi heartland states, considered India’s road to power. He writes a regular column for Hindustan Times, Ecostani, on important national politics, economy, Himalayan ecology and environmental issues. His other responsibilities include providing inputs for edits and edit page articles for the publication, apart from managing news flow from across India.Read More

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