By AFP - Agence France Presse
Brazil raises greenhouse gas emissions reduction target
Brazil plans to reduce greenhouse gas emissions more drastically than previously planned, the government of Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva has announced.
Instead of the previous target of reducing emissions by 59% on 2005 levels by 2035, the goal will be a 67% reduction, the left-wing government said on Friday.
The change aims to align Brazil's emissions target - called the “Nationally Determined Contribution,” or NDC - with the terms of the 2016 Paris Agreement, according to an official statement published on Friday.
Signatories to the Paris Agreement have until February to announce their new emission targets, but Brazil will present its new NDC target at the upcoming UN COP29 climate conference in Baku, Azerbaijan, starting on November 11.
Brazil will host the following climate conference, COP30, next November in the Amazonian city of Belém.
The new target would allow emissions to total around 850 million to one billion tons of carbon dioxide (CO2) by 2035, compared to 2.4 billion tons in the base year of 2005.
The government's note says that “the new NDC covers all sectors of the economy and is aligned with the Paris Agreement's goal of limiting average climate warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius,” the note says.
The note states that Brazil will achieve “climate neutrality” by 2050.
But the Brazilian NGO Observatório do Clima, a network of civil society and environmental groups, said the program was not ambitious enough.
Marcio Astrini, the group's executive secretary, said the country had omitted important information about its strategies against deforestation or the use of fossil fuels, adding that greater transparency should be expected from “a country that claims to be a leader in the multilateral fight against the climate crisis.”
The government announced this week that the rate of deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon has fallen by 30%, the biggest drop in 15 years.
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