Altamira (PA) leads in greenhouse gas emissions in Brazil

The Brazilian city that most emitted greenhouse gases in 2019 is far from the large national urban centers, such as São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro, which usually come to mind. This municipality is further north, entering the Amazon. It is Altamira, in Pará.

The data comes from the second edition of Seeg Municipalities (Greenhouse Gas Emissions and Removal Estimates System), a project of the Climate Observatory, launched this Monday morning (13).

Altamira took the place of São Félix do Xingu, also in Pará, leader in emissions in 2018 and which, the following year, was second in the national ranking of greenhouse gases. São Paulo occupies only fifth place, and Rio de Janeiro, eighth.

According to the study, the 35.2 MtCO_twoe (millions of tons of CO_two equivalent, a measure that unifies greenhouse gases) emitted by Altamira in 2019 would place it in the 108th position in the ranking of countries that most emit, leaving it ahead of Norway and Sweden, for example, according to WRI data ( World Resources Institute).

In the top 10 of issuers in the country, only São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro are outside the Amazon. And the explanation for this is the main source of emissions in Brazil: land use change, which, in this case, can be translated as deforestation.

Therefore, it is no coincidence that, in 2019, Altamira was the city with the highest level of deforestation in the Amazon. In second place in the deforestation ranking is São Félix do Xingu, which, in addition to cutting down forests, has the largest cattle herd in Brazil, with more than 2.3 million head of cattle —the process of digestion of cattle emits gases- stove; therefore, places with large herds tend to have large emissions.

Altamira also has an expressive herd, being the fourth largest in Pará and the 12th largest in the country (in 2019 and in the most recent data), according to the IBGE.

Deforestation in Brazil has an economic motivation. In the Amazon, it is usually associated with agricultural activities, with areas recently cleared, usually being occupied by herds. Taking this into account and seeing —through the MapBiomas platform, also from the Climate Observatory— in which the deforested areas have been transformed, the climate footprint of national agribusiness is further increased, with a massive contribution to Brazilian emissions and, consequently, of the leading municipalities in greenhouse gases.

Taking deforestation (land use change) out of the equation, São Paulo becomes the leader in emissions, followed by Rio de Janeiro, driven by the energy sector (which, in these cases, basically refers to the burning of fuels in transport ) and waste.

per capita emissions

In the Amazon, especially, once again, thanks to deforestation, many municipalities have per capita emissions (that is, the total emissions divided by each person who lives there) that are higher than those of countries that are significant in the fossil fuel market — whose burning is the central factor for climate change.

União do Sul, in Mato Grosso, and its 3,760 inhabitants lead the ranking of per capita emissions, with 1,831 tons of CO_twoand for every person in the city. In the municipality, emissions are predominantly related to deforestation and agribusiness. Other places known for the deforestation of the Amazon also show high levels of per capita emissions, such as Jacareacanga (690 tons of CO_twoe) and Novo Progresso (580 tons of CO_twoand).

“The per capita emissions draw a lot of attention. Five hundred, 600, 800 tons per inhabitant is an inconceivable business. But essentially because of deforestation”, says Tasso Azevedo, SEEG’s general coordinator. “It’s a super threat, but it’s a tremendous opportunity. Because if you stop deforestation, you drastically reduce emissions,” says Azevedo.

To give you an idea, in the world, the country with the highest emission per capita is Qatar, stage of the 2022 World Cup, with almost 41 tons of CO_twoand per inhabitant, according to WRI.

In São Paulo, with its large population, the per capita emission in 2019 was 1 ton per inhabitant, according to data from Seeg Municipalities.

Logging

You may be wondering: why does deforestation generate greenhouse gas emissions?

In short, in addition to trees in forests constantly taking carbon out of the air for the process of photosynthesis, they store carbon in themselves.

However, when the forests are cut down and, consequently, killed, this carbon accumulated in the forest ends up returning to the atmosphere.

It is not just the total cutting of a region that can accelerate the climate crisis. Forest degradation processes, with openings in the forest to remove trees and fires, also emit CO_two and can cause an area to end up emitting more carbon than it captures.

And then there are two problems. The first is that countries do not consider emissions from degradation in their “climate budgets”. The second is that the level of degradation in the Brazilian Amazon is already considerably higher than that of deforestation.

Currently, there are already regions of the Amazon emitting more carbon than removing it from the atmosphere, as shown by a recent research published in Nature.

Wealth

Seeg researchers also tried to see if, somehow, cities with higher levels of emissions from agriculture (also considered here as the deforestation footprint) “translated” these greenhouse gases into GDP. And the answer is that no, emissions have not generated wealth for the population.

“We found an inverted correlation”, says the coordinator of Seeg. “The municipalities that emit the most in agriculture are not the municipalities that have the highest GDP. In fact, they are far from it. This is because the large emission of livestock occurs when you have animals in low quality management, with degradation or degraded pastures. .”

On the other hand, the lowest emissions related to agribusiness are concentrated in places with more intensive land use, with more animals per hectare, non-degraded soils and municipalities with a predominance of agriculture.

“In general, where you have the highest agricultural GDPs, you have lower emissions,” says Azevedo.