Brazil asks for more int’l help preserving environment

Brazil’s Environment Minister Joaquim Leite said in Glasgow, Scotland, that the proposal from rich countries to help developing nations with $100 billion a year for environmental preservation initiatives and efforts to tackle climate change has become insufficient in face of the world’s need to transform the current mode of production.

“I believe the global challenge is a transition towards carbon neutrality in a practical but responsible way. What does that mean? It means we’ll need more than the yearly $100 billion,” Leite said Tuesday (Nov. 9) during an event at the Brazilian pavilion of the United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP26).

The minister mentioned a study by Boston Consulting Group (BCG), according to which the world needs to invest $150 trillion in the next 30 years if it is willing to meet the targets of the Climate Agreement signed in Paris in 2015 and keep global warming in check. This would mean $5 trillion a year for the coming three decades to build a reality where countries can migrate into an economic model based on low emissions of greenhouse effect gasses—among them carbon dioxide (CO²).

“The role of Brazil [at COP26] is to try and seek a multilateral consensus so that we head for a more green economy in a just way. The challenge is the financial incentive—not punishing, banning, or stopping [economic development], but speeding up towards a new green economy. And can you achieve that? With incentives. Innovation,” he argued.

Leite went on to state that, for Brazil and other developing countries, it will be difficult to afford the necessary innovations without financial support from wealthy nations. “Brazil clearly supports this movement where the solution to a new economy, neuter in emissions, lies in incentives, entrepreneurship, and green interest—things that keep a project standing. In some regions, a large number of projects are still unable to make this transition everyone’s waiting for,” the minister noted.