Perspective Chapter: One Step Forward, Two Steps Back – A Multilevel and Multi-Actor Analysis of the Importance of the Climate Emergency for Social Change in Brazil

1. Introduction

One of the latest Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) communications reinforced that recent changes in climate are widespread, rapid, intensified, and unprecedented in at least 6500 years [1], with urban centers being the places most subject to their impacts. The climate emergency is already affecting various regions of the Earth, through rising sea levels, increasingly long periods of drought and urban heat islands, excessive precipitation, and consequent flooding as well as land displacement. It is now scientific consensus that all of these changes are undoubtedly caused by human activities.

Risks are the problems faced by societies based on the way they are organized, structured, and developed. In this way, it is safe to say that climate-type risks produce effects of multi-scalar and multidimensional processes. As climate change has become an ever more central social and political concern, sociologists like Anthony Giddens and Ulrich Beck have suggested that societal logic is fundamentally changing from the distribution of the “goods” of modernity to the management of the “bads.” Despite an initially negative outlook on this emergence of risks like climate change, Beck suggested in his work on the “metamorphosis of the world” that climate change may actually turn into a force for good, putting into motion forces for unprecedented changes [2]. Thus, the sociological and analytical question that we are working on here is: in times of crisis, what does climate change do for society and how does it alter the order of Brazilian society and politics?

Whenever human activities are the most responsible for the worsening of global environmental changes, especially climate change, understanding the social and political dimensions of these changes is essential to undertake strategies to fight the impacts resulting from them [3]. As a consequence, the black box of traditional political issues reopens, inducing the need to overcome conventional social and political practices to forms of transnational responsibility in response to a global challenge. The causal mechanisms that generate the risks of climate change and the conditions for tackling them in times of globalized information society can now be clarified and identified [4].

The cosmopolitan metamorphosis of climate change (or global risk in general) concerns the coproduction of risk perceptions and normative horizons [2]. The idea of metamorphosis [2] is a new way of generating and implementing norms in the era of climate change. In the case of climate change as a metamorphosis, there is an agglutination between the topics of nature, society, and politics [5].

Climate change produces a basic sense of ethical and existential violation that could create new worldviews, norms, laws, markets, technologies, understandings of nations and states, urban forms, and international cooperation. Therefore, attention should be focused on what is emerging now like future structures and norms and new beginnings.

Addressing such a multifaceted challenge as the climate emergency, solutions are also expected to be comprehensive, including different areas of human activity, interested parties, and sectors of society, such as multilateral agencies, governments, the private sector, research institutes, and organized civil society groups. Furthermore, considering this is an anthropogenic challenge, characterized by its multidimensionality and its complex nature, it would be naive to believe that only one group of actors would be able to solve the climate crisis [6].

The involvement of nongovernmental actors, civil society organizations, private initiatives, universities, and research institutions are essential for the production of efficient and successful responses to the problem. These actors gain new political protagonism due to the centrality of climate change, forming multi-actor coalitions that reflect societal priorities and often anticipating governmental policies. These actor coalitions help to articulate knowledge, experience, and practices as climate change presents itself as a multiscale challenge, simultaneously relating to local and global scales.

There are several important actors in this process, and, among them, global cities and their networks are emerging as cosmopolitan actors. National governments continue to be relevant actors leading and coordinating the fight against climate change, in official and public mitigation and adaptation strategies. However, over the past decade, subnational levels (in particular cities) have gained political protagonism unseen before and have led forceful responses to climate change challenges around the world [7].

With regard to the multi-scalar and multidimensional aspects of the climate challenge, firstly, it is important to identify the main “players” in this conjuncture. Brazil is an important player, as it is among the top 10 cumulative emitters of greenhouse gases (GHG) (Figure 1). However, when observing its emissions profile, it becomes clear that its share of global fossil emissions is small, especially when considering cumulative emissions. It also becomes clear that most of its GHG emissions are due to changes in land use, a profile only similar to other big agricultural exporters like Indonesia and Argentina.

Land use and occupation, energy, and agriculture are emblematic sectors of the Brazilian emissions profile and are therefore largely linked to changes in land use and land management practices [9]. Based on the Brazilian Climate Change Observatory’s data in the Greenhouse Gas Emissions and Removals Estimation System (SEEG) [9], in 2018, land use and land cover change contributed to 44% of the country’s total emissions, followed by agriculture, which accounted for 25%. Deforestation has been the main source of land use emissions, accounting for 93% of the sector’s total from 1990 to 2018. These are mostly driven by global demand for Brazil’s agricultural commodities [10].

However, a domestic factor is the advance of urbanization over green areas, a driver that is also an increasing part of the deforestation problem. Therefore, reducing deforestation, promoting reform of agricultural structures and land, and developing climate-oriented urbanism are key actions for an advanced climate agenda in the country. Brazil’s often precariously urbanized cities concentrate on populous and poor peripheral zones, which are fragile to sudden and extreme climate changes. In terms of vulnerability to climate change impacts and extreme events, Brazil ranks 86 out of 181 countries in the ND-GAIN 2023 Index [11]. Extreme temperatures, rising sea levels, as well as the complex challenges of different regions across the country facing significant water scarcity and heavy rainfall are predicted to put significant pressure on vulnerable groups, urban infrastructure, the economy, and the country’s unique ecosystems [12].

In the face of the climate emergency, rethinking subnational and local planning in the social, economic, and ecological spheres is an urgent priority [13]. Given this panorama, social actors play an essential role in the planning, articulation, and advocacy of public policies that promote mitigating practices and climate adaptation for the population [4, 5, 6]. Ultimately it is at the municipal level that governance is closest to the population, private initiative, infrastructure, and local public services [6, 13].

This chapter aims to analyze Brazilian climate change policies from a multilevel and multi-actor perspective, seeking to understand the roles at both the national and local levels, as well as the involvement of actors in this process.

2. Local dimension of climate change in Brazil

According to the World Economic Forum [14], almost half (44%) of global GDP from cities is at risk due to losses of nature and biodiversity. The report exposes failures in climate action that can impact the economies of municipalities around the world. In this case, the report emphasizes the positive role of biodiversity for local economies by influencing air quality, water cycles, and flood regulation, as well as supporting the production of energy, food, and medicines.

This highlights how the climate crisis is not just a problem to be resolved by the scientific community. It is also the most significant political and intellectual challenge of this era. Furthermore, it is inextricably linked to three other growing systemic crises, such as biodiversity loss, industrial pollution, and inequalities in economic, social, racial, and gender spheres. The climate, biodiversity, pollution, and inequality crises amplify each other and represent a larger systemic crisis affecting democracy, the neoliberalist system, and ultimately, civilization.

In Brazil, 87% of the population lives in urban areas, corresponding to 185 million people, undergoing an urban deficit arising from the urbanization process and urban problems intensifying with climate change, such as housing deficit, lack of basic sanitation, problems with water supply, among others [15]. However, our research has shown that Brazilian local climate policies are still relatively isolated initiatives in the national context and that there are few substantive advances.

By 2024, we identified 12 of the 5570 municipalities that have a specific law that establishes a climate policy, corresponding to a population of 31,126,829 [16]. Between 2003 and 2011, seven municipalities approved their public climate change policies (Belo Horizonte, Curitiba, Feira de Santana, Manaus, Palmas, Rio de Janeiro, and São Paulo) and five municipalities approved them after 2014, with greater attention to adaptation (Fortaleza, Porto Alegre, Recife, Santos, and Sorocaba).

Not all of these municipal policies have clear mitigation or adaptation strategies. Seven of the 12 municipalities have mitigation strategies and six of them have adaptation actions [16]. Three municipalities did not define mitigation or adaptation actions. Most of the mitigation strategies include the establishment or planning of specific GHG emission reduction targets. Other actions involve the conservation of green areas and energy efficiency. Adaptation strategies mainly involve the civil defense and urban planning sectors [17].

Coastal cities represent an important gap in Brazil’s local climate policies, as they are considered even more vulnerable to climate change for a number of reasons. The first one is geographical specificity, followed by the interface between continent, atmosphere, and ocean. The third reason is the high concentration of people and infrastructures, which turns climate events into disasters since people and structures can be severely affected. Brazil has a coastline of almost 7500 km where some of the most important cities are located and where most of the population is concentrated. However, only five coastal cities (Fortaleza, Recife, Rio de Janeiro, Salvador, and Santos) have an adaptation strategy [17].

In Brazil’s coastal cities, climate risks are already worsening the socio-environmental vulnerability of marginalized populations and creating real climate emergencies [6, 18, 19, 20]. In these areas, there is a greater risk of landslides, floods, coastal erosion, and heat waves [21, 22]. There are also high levels of socio-spatial segregation and many informal settlements in risk areas [23], besides institutional discontinuity and a lack of political representation [24] that contribute to the heightened risk in the country’s coastal cities. An example of this was the recent tragedy of São Sebastião, in the coastal area of the state of São Paulo, when, on February 19, 2023, a storm caused landslides, carrying away houses and destroying some of the municipality’s key infrastructures, and thousands were killed or went missing [25].

In terms of institutional mechanisms for policy implementation, 10 of the 12 cities have established a Climate Forum or Committee, with the participation of municipal secretariats and agencies, universities and research institutes, the private sector, and civil society organizations. Table 1 offers a concise overview of the 12 municipal climate policies we identified in this research which combined deductive and inductive approaches [26] to analyze documents, observations, and semi-structured interviews [27]. To analyze the content, we employed a qualitative approach [26] and Structure Analysis [28]. Finally, we conducted a Multiscale Vulnerability Analysis [29]. The compiled results are presented in Table 1 below ordered alphabetically by city.

In 2017, the “Frente Nacional de Prefeitos” (FNP – National Front of Mayors), the “Governos Locais pela Sustentabilidade” (ICLEI – Local Governments for Sustainability), and the European Union signed the Global Pact of Mayors for Climate and Energy, an agreement that promotes greater collaboration between the world’s cities [30]. More than 120 Brazilian cities are part of this initiative, which sought to build connections between municipalities to increase the supply of financing and enable local actions for climate and renewable energy. It is considered the largest global alliance of cities and local governments to fight climate change currently.

3. Climate policies at the Brazilian national level

Climate actions related to institutional political structures in Brazil at the national level can be divided into four phases.

• First Phase (1992–2002): The creation of the National Climate Change Program in 1994, the first political-institutional structure to respond to climate change, as well as the Commission for Sustainable Development and the Center for Climate Studies (INPE/CPTEC – Commission for Sustainable Development and the Center for Climate Studies). The Commission on Global Climate Change was created in 1999. During this phase, civil society played an active role. The Brazilian Forum on Climate Change, created in 2000, is a case in point. It brings together representatives from the government, civil society, the private sector and research institutes. The importance of civil society has been emphasized in the process with the work of the NGO “Observatório do Clima” (Climate Observatory) since 2002.

• Second Phase (2003–2008): the development of a Climate Agenda takes shape. The first inventory of greenhouse gas emissions was conducted in 2004. The National Climate Change Plan started to be formulated in 2007 and concluded in 2008 along with the “Rede Global de Mudanças Climáticas” (Global Climate Change Network). It is worth noting the valuable contributions of the “Centro de Ciência do Sistema Terrestre” (CCST – Earth System Science Center) and the “Instituto Nacional de Ciência e Tecnologia de Mudanças Climáticas” (INCT - National Institute of Science and Technology of Climate Change) in 2008.

• Third Phase (2009–2012): establishment of a Brazilian Climate Policy. The “Política Nacional de Mudanças Climáticas” (PNMC – National Climate Change Policy) took place in 2009 along with the National Climate Change Fund. The “Painel Brasileiro de Mudanças Climáticas” (PBMC – Brazilian Panel on Climate Change) was founded. In 2010, the second inventory of greenhouse gas emissions was published, and in 2012 the first PBMC report was released. This is a very significant period for the Brazilian process that laid the foundations for many of the policies on climate change that followed.

• Fourth Phase (2013–2023): the implementation of the climate change policy begins with the following plans covering all Brazilian biomes and a wide range of sectors: A deforestation Control Plan for the Legal Amazon; Deforestation Control Plan for the Cerrado; 10-year Energy Plan; Low Carbon Agriculture Plan; Industry Transformation Plan; Low Carbon Emission Plan; and finally, the Transport and Urban Mobility Plan. In the middle of the decade, political resistance to several of the initiatives at the federal level formed and started to call into question the necessary emission cuts and reforms. This is where, similar to other federal systems, subnational initiatives began to show their importance for building continuity in Brazil’s climate change policy.

While Brazil has played a key role in the construction of the global environmental agenda, in particular through the United Nations “Rio Conventions” [31], their implementation in the country has had mixed success. Some of the backlashes have to do with powerful national industry groups like the agricultural lobby or a number of recent fossil fuel discoveries that have impacted important political narratives about climate change [32]. This means there have been clear steps backward, for instance when the state-owned petroleum company Petrobras increased its production of oil and other fossil fuels; GHG emissions have logically also increased, and connected deforestation has increased since 2012. Given the context of what we describe here as “one step forward, two steps back”, the most effective way to respond to the climate emergency is to focus on initiatives at the state and local levels for example, in the energy transition.

What is needed is a reduction in emissions, since the volume has only increased in Brazil since 1992. The results of the drastic political shift toward the right in 2015 and the five successive conference of the parties (COPs) appear to support this view, as there has been no commitment from Brazil to immediately reduce emissions. It seems that future targets have been set that may prove challenging to meet, at least in the short term.

4. Conclusions

In this chapter, we have documented the evolution of Brazilian climate change policies and the importance that the inclusion of different social actors has had over the last two decades.

These changes in Brazil’s climate governance have had significant impacts on the resilience and continuation of the adaptation and mitigation agenda. Especially the increasing activities of subnational actors stand out in an increasingly polarized political environment at the federal level. Since 2019, there has been open skepticism about climate change and a lack of concern about its risks in the policies of the then-president Jair Bolsonaro. Furthermore, the federal government has encouraged actions often not aligned with environmental protection, protecting the interests of the “rural caucus” leading to an increase in deforestation and the burning of natural resources.

Upon review of the existing policies, there seems to be a discrepancy between the existence and the fundamental purpose of the created institutional structures. This calls into question the actual achievement of objectives set in national agreements, agencies, and plans as opposed to (often ratified) international commitments. This discrepancy is evidenced by the increase in the rising consumption of fossil fuels, continued deforestation rates, and the annihilation of biodiversity even before the presidential term of Bolsonaro [33, 34].

This discrepancy or lack of alignment between federal and local climate policies may indicate an opportunity for improvements in the governance structure. Some Brazilian analysts have called this phenomenon “disgovernance” - a sensitive and crucial point in the country’s efforts to address climate change. This becomes clear in two Brazilian publications we would like to highlight here.

The first was published in Revista FAPESP under the title ‘The world boils” in 2023 and explains some of the back-and-forth of climate “(dis)governance” [(des)governança in Portuguese) [35]. The study pointed to a planet Earth on a heating course without brakes, in which global warming caused the hottest month in the last 150 years, accentuating the climate crisis. At the time of publication, the global temperature reached 20.96 degrees Celsius, making 31 July 2023 the hottest day in the planet’s recent history and certainly, this record may already be broken by the time of publication. The second article, entitled “Climate, Justice and Governance”, was published in the Jornal da Unicamp, presenting data and information on the role of universities as mediators in this process [36]. While important steps have been taken in the reconstruction of environmental institutions, the country’s leadership seems unwilling to move away from a development model that does not let go of fossil fuels. In their reflection on the outcomes of an academic seminar, the authors lament this mentality and ask for a more proactive role of universities in questioning a development model that further aggravates the climate crisis instead of contributing to solving it.

In the Brazilian context, extreme weather events are already being witnessed: record droughts in the Amazon [37], fires in the Pantanal swamplands [38] severe floods in Rio Grande do Sul. In the latter, an unprecedented calamity was caused in which more than 270 of the state’s 497 municipalities and the state capital were under water during the month of April [39]. At the same time heat waves swept across the country. This urgently calls for structural resilience solutions that go beyond a merely reactive approach time and again.

It might be helpful to explore additional strategies for addressing land grabbing, burning, and deforestation of green areas across the country, which are largely driven (and even politically promoted) by agribusiness and the expansion of urban areas. Additionally, there is a growing need for urban development that enhances the resilience, safety, and inclusivity of cities in the face of disaster risks.

It is clear that Brazil’s fragile governance system—the result of a political arena that has been degrading and weakening the country’s environmental agenda—needs to be addressed as a whole. There is a clear and pressing need for this process to be reversed, integrating diverse interested parties into the complex political game of public climate and environmental policies at all levels. This should be done as outlined by Seixas et al. [36], through a participatory dialog.

It is evident that at the national level, the country still has a significant amount of work to do to advance its environmental policies. Since 2012, many of these policies have been discontinued. Since 2018, they have been met with structural resistance from the federal level. To mitigate deforestation and land use and occupation that increases greenhouse gas emissions, we must promote integrated public policies and strengthen institutions that have been created for this purpose since Brazil’s democratization in 1988.

The following efforts are recommended:

1. Promotion of the National Council of Environment (Conama) and its participatory chambers;

2. Reinforcement of the “Brazilian Institute for the Environment and Natural Resources” (IBAMA) and the “Chico Mendes Institute for Biodiversity Conservation” (ICMBio) with financial, technical, and human resources to enable them to effectively inspect and prevent environmental crimes in Brazil;

3. Review of the purchase process of land’s important biomes (Amazon, Cerrado, Atlantic Forest, Pantanal, Pampa, etc.).

For this purpose, blocking bills in the Federal Chamber of Deputies that allow or facilitate this kind of business, such as the proposed law 2963/2019, is an urgent measure. Finally, as a lot of the defunding of environmental monitoring has been justified with necessary reductions in public spending, the national campaign for the taxation of large fortunes should become a reality. The amount collected from the tax could finance climate adaptation and mitigation works in cities impacted by current extreme events. Figure 2 exposes a diagram of our suggestions.

On the other hand, international reinforcement is as welcome as it is necessary. In this respect, we consider essential:

1. International pressure for Brazil’s commodity agribusiness to review its production and marketing patterns in favor of more sustainable agriculture. Only in this way, the country can stop relying on an unsustainable development mode as one of the biggest exporters of cheap natural resources to the world economy [water, solar energy, biodiversity, food, etc.] while not providing these to its own population;

2. Drastically reducing the export of pesticides to Brazil;

3. Demanding that Brazilian companies effectively adopt the 2030 Agenda, especially national and foreign corporations in the chemical, mining, energy, infrastructure, and transport sectors, and;

4. Measures against the acquisition of land grabbed by foreign business groups in the country.

The risks posed by global climate change are affecting Brazil in a number of very visible ways already. They affect everyone, in the Global North and the Global South, and it is becoming increasingly difficult to “buy our way out” of this crisis. In line with Beck’s [2] final ideas about the positive societal forces the enormous risks of climate change can generate, our hope is that organized Brazilian civil society will ultimately manage to hold its political representatives more accountable, maintain and even expand its much-needed representation in the coordination of solutions to this crisis – and finally make two steps forward again.