Activists call for annulment of Brazil's climate commitment
Six young activists have filed a lawsuit asking that the Brazilian climate commitment signed in December be annulled.
They claim the updated goal announced by the Bolsonaro administration is a step backwards in relation to the Paris Agreement, which violates the international treaty. The initiative, supported by eight former Environment ministers, is unprecedented in Brazil.
The citizen suit with a request for an injunction filed Tuesday in a court in São Paulo was structured by a group of six lawyers who work with environmental issues and supported the young members of NGO Engajamundo and movement Fridays For Future Brasil.
The initiative wants the federal government, Environment Minister Ricardo Salles and former Foreign Affairs Minister Ernesto Araújo to be held accountable for what they call a "climate tampering" at the release of the new Brazilian target. It raised the country's greenhouse emissions by 400 million tonnes in 2030 over what had been estimated in the previous commitment. The Paris Agreement says countries have to make progress with each new commitment.
"The government has closed doors to civil society, does not listen to organizations and movements. This decision suggests a regression," says Marcelo Rocha, 23, of Fridays for Future Brasil, a climate movement started in 2018 by Swedish activist Greta Thunberg. "We who live on the outskirts know well what climate change means. We feel it daily, but we don't know how to name things. We suffer with landfills and respiratory diseases," Mr. Rocha says. "We want the government to adjust the percentages."
Central to the suit is the new Nationally Determined Contribution (NDC), the climate commitment that countries present every five years. The first Brazilian NDC is from 2015. Brazil committed to a 37% cut in 2025 in relation to 2005 and indicated another cut, of 43%, in 2030. In December, the Bolsonaro administration updated the goal, confirming the indicative 43% cut for 2030. What changed, however, was the baseline, with the updating of the country's emissions inventory. As a result, the environmentalists say, the country will emit more in 2030 than before.
"It is a flagrant violation of the Paris Agreement, which only allows increases in the level of ambition of the NDCs and not the other way around," says Txai Bandeira Suruí, a young indigenous woman from...
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