ENERGY
Biden contemplates a climate deal with the ‘Trump
of the tropics’
Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro is a
climate-scoffing populist whose allies are hacking away at the Amazon, the
rainforest that sucks up vast amounts of the world's carbon pollution.
By ZACK
COLMAN and MICHAEL GRUNWALD
05/08/2021
07:00 AM EDT
https://www.politico.com/news/2021/05/08/biden-amazon-bolsonaro-485836
Much of
President Joe Biden’s ambitions to save the planet comes down to a delicate
dance: Can he cut a deal with the Brazilian leader whose allies are slashing
and burning the Amazon?
Biden may
have little choice but to try — despite warnings from U.S. allies and activists
inside and outside of Brazil that he cannot trust the “Trump of the tropics.”
So Biden
and his climate envoy, John Kerry, have dived headlong into talks with Brazilian
President Jair Bolsonaro, a populist who has scoffed at the dangers of climate
change even as vast swaths of the Amazon rainforest disappear on his watch.
Bolsonaro,
who has often drawn comparisons to the former U.S. president, has even asked
the U.S. for a $1 billion-a-year pay-off in return for pledges to stop the
deforestation, while refusing demands for accountability. That proposal has
fallen flat with the United States.
Cutting a
climate bargain with Bolsonaro is a politically and ethically fraught bargain
for any American president to contemplate. Still, Bolsonaro holds the keys to
60 percent of the Amazon, a crucial resource that absorbs 5 percent of the
world’s annual carbon dioxide emissions. Unless Kerry can find a way to save
the Amazon, whose forests shrank 4,000 square miles between August 2019 and
July 2020 in Brazil alone, there may be little chance that the world will reach
the targets set out in the Paris Climate Agreement and avoid disaster.
In an
interview with POLITICO, Brazilian Environment Minister Ricardo Salles rebuked
the skeptics he accused of trying to derail the U.S.-Brazil talks.
“The
narrative has been absolutely wrong. People said we wouldn't have a dialogue,
but all the conditions are in place for achieving something positive," he
said. "They said this dialogue would never occur, and now that they
realized it’s going well, they say: Don’t trust him! Don’t talk to him! But who
are they supposed to talk to? We’re the government!"
People in
Kerry’s orbit say the urgency of the climate crisis calls for engaging with the
leaders who are running Brazil today, not just hoping for a more congenial
government to win the 2022 elections.
“The risk
of talking to him and exploring with him is outweighed by the risk of doing
nothing and just letting the forest disappear,” said a person directly familiar
with Kerry’s team’s thinking. “In other words, saying we really can't afford to
just wait for the next guy.”
Money may
be the only way to persuade Bolsonaro. Since taking office in January 2019, his
nationalist government’s policies have backed farmers and ranchers who are
chopping down the rain forest, ignoring the rising global pleas to protect the
Amazon. And like Trump, he's mocked concerns about climate change, once
suggesting to a journalist that people could eat less and "poop every
other day" to save the planet.
But the
importance of the Amazon has made the talks with Bolsonaro, along with the
equally controversial Salles, a focal point of the former U.S. secretary of
State’s diplomacy. Members of Kerry's and Salles' teams speak weekly —
including a scheduled conversation Friday — and Kerry has praised Salles on
Twitter, while Salles has posted his photos with American diplomats on his
Instagram account.
Both sides
stress that their discussions are serious. Besides the $1 billion a year to
combat deforestation, which is unlikely to happen under the terms Bolsonaro has
floated, people familiar with the talks say the two sides are also discussing
pilot projects to promote sustainable economic development in the Amazon, as
well as a side deal the U.S. could make with the Brazilian state of Mato
Grosso, which has already substantially reduced deforestation. The talks have
also envisioned a multilateral carbon market that would allow Brazil and other
Amazon nations to sell carbon credits to oil companies and other corporations
to offset their greenhouse gas emissions.
But it's a
ticklish exercise for Kerry and his deputies, chiefly Jonathan Pershing, the
point person for the talks. Many of the critics of the government in Brazil,
from indigenous groups and former environment ministers to even current
officials within the government, say Bolsonaro cannot be trusted.
“Bolsonaro
is a bulldozer, and Salles is a chainsaw. You won’t stop them by treating them
with money,” said Carlos Rittl, a senior fellow at the Institute for Advanced
Sustainability Studies in Potsdam, Germany, who until February 2020 led a Sao
Paulo-based environmental coalition, the Climate Observatory.
Brazilian
officials say criticism of the bilateral talks are simply aimed at undermining
what they contend are honest efforts by Bolsonaro's government to fight climate
change.
“There are
people in Brazil and the U.S. who are doing everything they can do to destroy
this ongoing cooperation, telling Biden 'don't trust those guys, they won't
keep their promises.' But that's ridiculous,” an official in the Bolsonaro
administration told POLITICO. “How else can you improve the situation? The
radical approach won't work, and we're glad the Biden administration is being
pragmatic.”
People
close to the Kerry team say the U.S. officials leading negotiations with
Bolsonaro have never viewed him as a reliable partner, but protecting the
Amazon is simply too important to climate change to ignore. Their effort
amounts to keeping Bolsonaro in their diplomatic orbit, providing him domestic
public cover on the Amazon and hoping his regime won't let the forest burn to
the ground.
The U.S.
strategy could be summarized as engagement and containment, a term those
familiar with the talks used to describe Kerry’s attempts to temper a Bolsonaro
economic agenda that depends significantly on expanding forest-clearing for
agricultural allies.
Both
Bolsonaro and Salles are reeling from domestic criticism amid the nation's
runaway coronavirus infections, and Salles is facing a federal investigation
for allegedly aiding illegal loggers. And both face tough reelection odds in
2022.
The
scrutiny of the talks between the U.S. and Brazil has led to an uproar from
activists in both countries, with 200 non-governmental organizations and 15
Democratic senators cautioning President Joe Biden on making pacts with
Bolsonaro. The risk, they say, is that a politically weakened Bolsonaro might
promise anything to the U.S. to try bolster his domestic appeal — and Biden’s
Leaders Summit on Climate last month presented just such an opportunity.
At that
virtual event, Bolsonaro vowed that Brazil would be carbon-neutral by 2050,
recommitted to "net-zero" deforestation by 2030 and pledged to double
the country's environmental enforcement budget. But his critics said those
promises are distant and carry no accountability mechanisms. That Bolsonaro’s
domestic budget the next day called for slashing funding for IBAMA, the
government arm that combats deforestation, underscored those complaints —
though a source in the Brazilian government said that funding is being
restored.
“The
government will just try to postpone the problem. And that’s it,” a person in
the Brazilian government who is aware of the conversations with the U.S. told
POLITICO, and who requested anonymity because they were not authorized to speak
with the media. “We may at some point be unable to keep procrastinating
forever, and then we may clash with the Americans. I can’t imagine any serious
agreement, unless the Americans want to pretend they're naive and accept some
false promises.
“The best
we can do is try to contain Bolsonaro to some extent,” the person added.
Bolsanaro’s
request for the $1 billion-a-year payment comes down to this: Rain forest
covers nearly 60 percent of Brazil’s land mass, but the industrialized nations
that long ago bowled over their own forests to develop their economies expect
Brazil to make a disproportionate economic sacrifice in the name of climate
change.
“You’re
asking us to solve a problem that you created and are continuing to aggravate.
We want you to help solve our problems with lack of prosperity and economic
opportunity in the Amazon region," Salles said, noting the U.S. is
responsible for nearly three times more global greenhouse gas emissions than
Brazil.
Some
countries have recognized those arguments and previously tried to compensate
Brazil, but Bolsonaro has largely rejected the terms. Germany and Norway
protested his handling of the $1.2 billion Amazon Fund that pays for forest
protection projects, with both nations in 2019 suspending additional funding
and Norway freezing the nearly $600 million it contributed to the program.
Salles, meanwhile, called for rich nations to pay for Amazon maintenance before
2019 climate talks in Madrid, Spain, a request that was undermined by a sharp
spike in wildfires linked to Bolsonaro's agricultural allies who use fire to
clear forest land.
That
history is why environmentalists were aghast when Kerry seemed willing to
entertain Bolsonaro’s pitch last month for the U.S. to pay Brazil an annual $1
billion for Amazon protection. To them, it was akin to ransom, and the notion
that the Biden administration might cut a deal without conditions or consulting
indigenous communities that have fought Bolsonaro’s policies brought a furious
response.
“At first
we had real concerns: Do they know who they're dealing with? But they are eyes
wide open,” said Nat Keohane, senior vice president for climate at the
Environmental Defense Fund.
The Biden
administration sending Bolsonaro money without proving he can first rein in
deforestation is a non-starter, said Jake Schmidt, senior strategic director of
international climate for the Natural Resources Defense Council.
“We don’t
write checks for people who don’t do stuff,” he said.
Financial
aid has in the past helped curb deforestation. Rittl noted that other nations
raised billions for Brazilian Amazon protection between 2004 to 2012, which
coincided with a steep decline in deforestation. Forest destruction has since
ticked upward.
“Many
details are yet to be resolved, and it is fair to ask all countries — the
United States, Brazil and others — how we are going to reach our ambitious
goals,” a State Department spokesperson said in an email.
“Achieving
ambitious goals requires resources, and we are committed to partnering with
Brazilians in that effort,” the spokesperson added, noting that Bolsonaro
“struck a positive and constructive tone” at Biden’s summit.
The talks
between the two nations began in February, when Kerry reached out to Salles and
Brazil’s foreign minister to establish regular communication about
deforestation issues in the country.
The
conversations have continued apace as Kerry races to line up sizable new
pledges from other countries ahead of November’s international climate talks in
Glasgow, Scotland. On the table are measures to increase enforcement to slow
deforestation, improving monitoring of the rain forest and creating new
incentives to finance forest protection. Schmidt said some ideas discussed
include enhanced collaboration with NASA or the Justice Department to crack
down on illegal deforestation.
One new
wrinkle is an emerging $1 billion public-private partnership endeavor called
the Lowering Emissions by Accelerating Forest finance, or LEAF, Coalition. The
effort announced at Biden’s climate summit would have major companies, like
Amazon, Salesforce and GlaxoSmithKline, purchase emissions reductions credits
from forestry projects in countries around the world.
The
Brazilian state of Mato Grosso, which is home to both major agricultural
operations and vast areas of rain forest, is interested in participating,
according to people familiar with the government’s plan. Five Brazilian states
already have programs that meet the emissions monitoring and verification
standard the LEAF Coalition is using, said Eron Bloomgarden, executive director
with environmental group Emergent, which administers the program.
But it is
unclear whether Bolsonaro would allow states to act without federal approval,
former Brazilian Environment Minister Izabella Teixeira said in an email. And
Bolsonaro has put Salles in charge of Brazil's environmental agenda, so Kerry
could risk a diplomatic breach if he cuts deals with the states.
“They're
very sensitive about that not being a diplomatic thing to do right now,” said
the person aware of Kerry’s team’s thinking.
Yet the
Bolsonaro administration official said it is aware of those discussions between
the U.S. and Mato Grosso adding, “I don't think the federal government would
oppose anything that brings resources into the country.”
Some
leverage may exist with Salles' domestic political need to generate some
positive press to help alleviate legal and political turmoil, Teixeira said.
Salles has expressed interest in establishing a voluntary carbon market, though
she added that issues like protecting the Amazon carry little importance for
Bolsonaro’s political base.
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