The COP26, 26th UN climate conference, in Glasgow continues until November 12th. It is the first time that countries update their commitments (NDCs) to cut greenhouse gas emissions since the 2015 Paris Agreement.
Developing countries, historically smaller emitters, and with fewer resources to deal with the issue, should not pay this bill.
The Brazilian government improved its target, but did not clarify which database it will use. It presented NDC with a 50% cut in net emissions until 2030, against 43% in Paris (taking 2005 as base year). According to Seeg, the Greenhouse Gas Emission and Removal Estimation System, Brazil emitted in net terms (after removals) 1.5 gigatonnes of CO2e last year, against 2.3 Gt in the base year of 2005.
Some accuse the government of committing a “carbon pedaling” as the 2005 figure would have been revised upwards in the new NDC (as per the MCTI’s fourth inventory).
Assuming base-year emissions of 2.4 Gt, the target for 2030 will be 1.2 Gt, against 1.5 Gt in 2020, which will require a 20% cut by then. It’s a doable goal.
Deforestation, mostly in the Amazon biome, was responsible for a staggering 1Gt of emissions in 2020. Fortunately, most of it was removed by protected areas and secondary vegetation, reducing the net contribution of deforestation to 0.4Gt, which is still unacceptable.
We will see if by 2030 the next governments will fulfill Jair Bolsonaro’s promise to eliminate illegal deforestation.
Putting the issue in perspective, Brazil’s contribution to CO2e emissions is much smaller than the headlines indicate. According to Our World in Data, the world emitted in 2016 about 50Gt. China emitted 24% of the total, the United States 12%, India and the EU 6.5% each, and Brazil less than 3%. When analyzing per capita emissions, it becomes even clearer that Brazil is not largely responsible for the increase in the concentration of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. The world average was 5 t per capita in 2016. Each American emitted 15 t, the German 8.5 t, the Chinese 6.7 t, and the Brazilian only 3.6 t, with all deforestation included.
Our problem is not emitting too much, but controlling deforestation. As CO2 stays in the atmosphere for centuries, it makes sense to analyze the emissions accumulated since the advent of capitalism and the industrial revolution. Our World in Data, in a graph published in The Economist, indicates that Brazil has cumulatively emitted since 1750 15 Gt of CO2 out of a world cumulative total of 1,600 Gt, ie less than 1% (not including deforestation).
A geopolitically-biased study just published by the Carbon Brief, which calculated gross accumulated emissions of CO2 including deforestation between 1850 and 2021, ranks Brazil fourth in the world (16 GT accumulated from fossils and 96 GT from deforestation). However, in terms of per capita emissions, Brazil is not among the 20 largest emitters, due to its large population.
At the first climate conference, Rio92, a consensus was reached that the responsibility for addressing emissions should be differentiated between countries. In fact, the richest countries have emitted more historically, are the ones that emit more today, and above all have more competence, know-how and resources to contribute to the solution.
Unfortunately, the Paris commitment of $100 billion annually to mitigate emissions cuts in developing countries has not been met. Countries like Brazil and others, that struggle to get rich and that are exposed to impacts they did not cause, cannot pay this bill.
.
