|
SPAC Watch
SPAC Watch Research: Brazil
Accountability
• Brazil has a NSSD called the Brazilian Agenda 21 . Objective 1 of the strategy is titled "Sustainable production and consumption versus the waste culture". The chapter tackles both waste reduction as well as poverty. "To demand contention and sobriety from our elites, there including the upper middle class, is as important as overcoming the paradox that involves the poor: a lot of times they lack food on their table but, even in poverty, waste continues. The solution to this and other similar problems is to change the consumption patterns and to fight the waste culture." [i]
• Brazil also comes out with Pluri Annual Plans every 4 years in order to direct the course of government action over the next 4 years. In the PPA 2004 - 2007, there is a Program on Policies and Economic Instruments towards SPAC. This program includes the following actions: 1) Support to the development of studies of the economic value of the environmental services related to biodiversity. 2) Support to the development of economic instruments to conservation and sustainable use of biodiversity. 3) Capacity building and information dissemination on SPAC. 4) Creation of Mediation Agency of Sustainable Business. 5) Creation and articulation of mechanisms to finance sustainable development. 6) Promotion of projects on production, environmental services, and commercialization of sustainable products. 7) Generation, dissemination and adoption of Environmental Sustainable Technologies. 8) Environmental-economic indicators. 9) Credit instruments to extractives activities. 10) Economic instruments to SPAC. [ii]
Responsibility
• The opening to foreign trade, along with this balance of payments crisis, has pushed indebted countries into greater specialisation in the production of primary or intermediate export products, whose prices are constantly depreciated. At the same time, the deterioration of terms of trade means a greater need to increase the volume of exports. Since this behaviour is common to all underdeveloped countries-and since foreign debt intensifies this tendency-predatory competition is the rule of the day, forcing export prices even lower. A vicious cycle sets in whereby lower raw material export prices drops leading to a higher export of goods that are environmentally destructive. This specialisation in export production and the resulting decrease in international market prices also work to transfer more income to developed countries. Financially, this means the acquisition of companies and other assets by the First World. Materially, it means over-consumption of natural resources and energy from developing countries. In both North and South, therefore, inequities are increased and the goals of sustainability become even more distant: under-consumption by the majority shares the same roots as over-consumption by the few. [iii]
• The US-based Nourish the New Brazil (NNB) Campaign supports sustainable food production and consumption to nourish the formation of a democratic and just Brazil. This Campaign is working in conjunction with the national Zero Hunger mobilization under way in Brazil. [iv]
Implementation
• In order to optimise sustainable management of the Amazon forest in Brazil, GRET has been entrusted with building an information network on production and consumption channels for wood products in France and Brazil. The Amazon Forest Network has several objectives, the most important of which is to bring the various stakeholders concerned (enterprises, NGOs, environmentalists, small producers' organisations, government authorities, etc.) into contact with each other. [v]
• "The first major hurdle to be overcome, domestically, is the tremendous concentration of wealth and of income so characteristic of Brazilian society. Alongside a minority that reproduces unsustainable First World consumption patterns, lives the majority deprived of its social and environmental rights. The second major hurdle arises from Brazil's international subordination. Given Brazil's - and many other countries' - increasing foreign debt, the consumption needs of the population represents a low priority for public policies." [vi]
Endnotes
[i] Objective 1, Brazilian Agenda 21: Priority actions,
[ii] "Brazil: Initial approach for assessment report on national progress towards SPAC", Lisa Gunn, IDEC, 2003 < http://icspac.net/documents/Brazil_SPAC_.pdf >
[iii] "An agenda for Brazil" Sergio Selsinger, Sustainable Production and Consumption: A Global Challenge, 2002 < http://www.milieudefensie.nl/foenl/publications/SPC_DEF.PDF >
[iv] Nourish the new Brazil Compaign, < http://nourishnewbrazil.org/campaign/campaign.html >
[v] " Amazon Forest Network: Developing Sustainable Production and Consumption Channels for Forest Products from the Amazon", WWF et al, 2001-2003 < http://www.gret.org/monde_uk/result.asp?pays=31 >
[vi] "An agenda for Brazil" Sergio Selsinger, Sustainable Production and Consumption: A Global Challenge, 2002 < http://www.milieudefensie.nl/foenl/publications/SPC_DEF.PDF >