Brazil Pledges Ambitious Emissions ReductionsBy Taryn Fransen on November 18, 2009

New targets and deforestation numbers put Brazil in the spotlight.

The government of Brazil announced last Friday that it will reduce its emissions by at least 36% from business as usual by

2020. This dramatic (though non-binding) target came in the wake of news that Brazilian deforestation is currently at its

lowest level since measurement began over twenty years ago. As the international climate negotiations in Copenhagen

approach, what do these numbers actually mean?

A Look at the Numbers

First, it is important to clarify that the target is a 36 - 39% drop from “business as usual” (BAU), not from current emissions

levels. (BAU levels are based on projections of future emissions if no action is taken.) This translates to a 15 - 18%

reduction from 2005 levels. Even so, these numbers look relatively ambitious in the international context, especially

considering that Brazil is a developing country and does not have a quantitative emission reduction obligation under the

Kyoto Protocol. By comparison, the American Clean Energy and Security Act of 2009 passed by the U.S. House of

Representatives in June would reduce U.S. emissions by 14% over the same period.

Brazil’s expected reductions by sector are shown in the table below:

Sector2005

(MtCO2e)1

BAU 2020 (MtCO2e)2

Targeted range for

2020 (MtCO2e)3

Targeted change relative to BAU

(%)4

Targeted change relative to 2005

(%)5

Planned interventions6

Land Use 1139.3 1084 415 (24.7) (63.7) Reduction of deforestation in the Amazon by 80%; reduction of deforestation in the Cerrado by 40%

Agriculture and Ranching

467.4 627 461 - 494 (4.9 - 6.1) (1.4) - 5.7 Recuperation of pastures, interated farming and ranching, no-till, biological nitrogen fixation

Energy 354.3 901 694 - 735 (6.1 - 7.7) 48.9 - 107 Energy efficiency, biofuels, hydropower, alternative sources (e.g. wind)

Other 61.3 92 82 - 84 (0.3 - 0.4) 33.8 - 37 Substitution of charcoal from deforestation in pig iron production

Total 2022.3 2703 1651 - 1728 (36.1 - 38.9)

(18.4 - 14.6)

Over half of the proposed reductions are expected to come from efforts already underway to stem deforestation in the

Amazon, which accounts for about two-thirds of Brazil’s total emissions. Yet it is unclear how much of the recent drop in

deforestation is due to policy changes, such as the recent crack-down on illegal logging and enhanced enforcement of

land licensing, versus the economic crisis, which has reduced global demand for the beef and soy production that has

traditionally driven deforestation.

Another point of contention regarding the design of the target was the calculation of BAU emissions. The government has

not released its methodology for the projections, and there is debate as to what economic growth rate should have been

assumed in the calculations. Using a higher growth rate would result in higher estimates of BAU emissions, and an

inflated BAU would make Brazil’s percent reduction target relatively easier to achieve. The Ministry of Environment had

initially put forward an estimate based on a 4% economic growth rate, and the administration, in turn, suggested using 5%

or 6%, which some environmentalists consider unrealistically high.

Reaction from Environmental Groups

Nonetheless, the reaction from Brazilian environmental groups has been mostly positive, with some reservations.

According to João Talocchi of Greenpeace, “Two years ago, if you said the word ‘target,’ [the government] wanted to

revoke your passport and deport you. This is a change that could help in the Copenhagen negotiations.”

But environmentalists are also criticizing the lack of transparency in the process of developing the target, and demanding

that the government release its calculations, update the national inventory, enshrine in national policy the steps that will

be taken to implement the goal, and include the target in the Copenhagen agreement, presumably because this may lead

to international monitoring and verification of the results.

Developing Countries Take Action

Brazil’s announcement, three weeks before the December COP-15 climate negotiations, may help put pressure on

wealthier nations to make similar pledges. Brazil is not alone; other major developing countries have stepped forward

with significant proposals as well. Mexico has pledged to halve its greenhouse gas emissions by 2050. South Africa has

presented a detailed plan to peak its national emissions by 2020. China has launched an effort to reduce energy intensity

20 percent from 2005 levels by 2010, and has said it will reduce its carbon intensity by “a notable margin” by 2020. (Most

of these proposals are contingent on financial support from developed countries.) While it looks increasingly unlikely that a

deal will be finalized in December, negotiations are expected to continue, and the question of how the mitigation burden

should be shared both between and among developed and developing countries will continue to be contentious.

Brazil’s new agenda is a politically important step, and it is significant that the Brazilian government is now willing to take

on a target (even a voluntary one). This is a real change in tone from the administration. Developed countries, and

especially the U.S., will have to take note and put forward their own ambitious targets. Yet Brazil’s target will be

meaningless unless significant steps are taken to implement it. This means continuing to improve the management of the

Amazon by clarifying and implementing land tenure laws, addressing excessive fire outbreaks, and reducing subsidies to

competing land uses that drive deforestation; tackling emissions from agriculture and ranching; and reversing the trend of

increasing carbon intensity in the energy sector. The world will be watching to see how Brazil approaches these

challenges in the years to come. In the meantime, other countries must step up to the plate and match Brazil’s ambition.

Brazil

Brazil is aiming to reduce its emissions to 1994 levels and cut deforestation by 80 percent from historic highs by

2020.

Brazil's National Climate Change Plan is focused on expanding renewable electric energy sources and beefing up the use of biofuels in

the transportation industry. The country is also focusing heavily on reducing deforestation rates: It's hoping to eliminate illegal

deforestation and bring the net loss of forest coverage to zero by 2015.

But a proposal to loosen Brazil's deforestation rules is currently making its way through the legislature. If enacted, critics say the

changes could create more opportunities for logging.

Climate Strategists: To Cut Emissions, Focus On Forestsby CHRISTOPHER JOYCE 

Antonio Scorza/AFP/Getty Images The world's forests act as massive sponges, sucking carbon from the atmosphere. Above, an aerial photo from 2009 shows massive deforestation in the Brazilian state of Para.

December 10, 2011

Some climate strategists are looking beyond the United Nations and the idea of remaking the energy economy — and

toward the world's tropical forests.

The basic idea is to provide rich countries that emit lots of climate-warming gases another way to reduce their carbon

footprint besides replacing or retrofitting factories and power plants. Instead, they could just pay poorer countries to keep

their forests, or even expand them. Forests suck carbon out of the atmosphere. It's like paying someone to put carbon in a

storehouse.

This is called REDD, for short: Reduced Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation.

A Global Look At Climate ChangeClimate Change Trends: Carbon Emissions GiantsCountry By Country: What Top Emitters Are Doing To Tackle Climate Change

Hans Brasker, foreign minister of Norway, thinks it's a great idea, and not just to slow warming.

"We very strongly believe that we will have established a genuine global partnership to save the treasures of the

remaining tropical forest," he told the delegates at the South African climate talks. Norway is spending about $3 billion to

make REDD happen.

But skeptics question whether forest storehouses are safe. What's to stop people from cutting them down someday and

releasing all that carbon back into the atmosphere? What about indigenous people who live in forests? Will they lose their

homes if the woods are turned into carbon "plantations"?

At the climate talks, some skeptics mocked the idea of REDD. Simone Lovera from the Global Forest Coalition

announced the "muddled moose" award at a press conference, explaining that it's meant to alert people to "the big fairy

tales that are being told about REDD."

But REDD's backers say it offers something for rich and poor countries alike. And some are not waiting for the United

Nations to decide on a final REDD process.

"International action would be great," says Tony Brunello, a forestry expert with the REDD Offset Working Group in the

U.S. "But we're not seeing it. We're not seeing it anywhere."

Testing REDD's Technology

Brunello wants California, where he once advised the governor on climate issues, to partner with states in other countries

on REDD projects. Even though the U.S. does not limit greenhouse gases, California will, starting in 2013. "The

fundamental issue is to give a signal to the rest of the world that it's possible," Brunello says, "and also a stamp of

approval from California, and that people should invest in it."

EnlargeRodrigo Baleia/LatinContent/Getty Images Deforestation and forest fires are responsible for 75 percent of the carbon dioxide emissions in Brazil. Above, smoke from a fire on livestock pastures in Brazil's Mato Grosso state breaks into the forest, September 2009.

California businesses will need to buy so-called carbon offsets — paying someone, somewhere, to remove carbon from

the atmosphere because it's cheaper than the businesses doing it themselves. Brunello's group will match those

businesses with states like Acre in Brazil and Chiapas in Mexico. Those places have lots of forest they can preserve, for a

price. But so far there are no rules.

"How does a company in California — a Pacific Gas and Electric, a Southern California Edison — how would they legally

go and talk with the people in one of our states in Acre in Brazil and do a carbon offset trade?" Brunello asks.

California officials are open to the idea, but cautious. "We don't have the resources ourselves to, you know, take over the

forest management of those parts of the world," says Mary Nichols, who runs the state's climate program at the Air

Resources Board.

And carbon banks will need to be managed. For example, you'll need to measure exactly how much carbon is stored in a

forest, because companies will be paying for it by the ton. Then how do you safeguard your investment? The Amazon is a

carpet of green about two-thirds the size of the continental U.S.

Environmental scientist Greg Asner at Stanford University thinks he's got a solution: LIDAR, a special laser carried on an

airplane.

"That laser is able to pick up the three-dimensional structure of the canopy, all the way down to the ground," says Asner,

"and all the layers in between, from the top down to the bottom. It's like a virtual world. You can find the species you're

interested in, you can understand its carbon, you can understand how tall the trees are, how many branches they have."

Asner, who works with the Offset Group, has flown his device over some of the most remote parts of the Amazon. He

says he can tell how healthy a forest is, how diverse, even what kind of animals live there.

The offset working group is crafting rules and technical specs for REDD projects. Acre and Chiapas have already passed

measures to pave the way. The team figures if it works for California, they can take it on the road, with or without an

international treaty.

Brazil pledges deep emission cuts in 'political gesture' to rich nationsBrazil will take proposals for voluntary reductions of 38-42% by 2020 to the Copenhagen climate change conference next month, chief of staff saysTom Phillips in Rio de Janeiroguardian.co.uk, Tuesday 10 November 2009 11.44 EST

Half of Brazil’s proposed cuts will come from a reduction in deforestation, while the remaining 20% relates to industry and farming. Photograph: Greenpeace/Rodrigo Baleia

The Brazilian government is preparing to pledge a big curb in its greenhouse gas emissions by 2020 as a "political gesture" aimed at pressing rich nations into agreeing to large cuts in carbon.

The country's chief of staff, Dilma Rousseff, said Brazil would take proposals for voluntary reductions of 38-42% by 2020 to theCopenhagen climate change summit next month. The reductions are from projected 2020 emissions levels if no action was taken."What Brazil is doing is a political gesture," said Rouseff, following a climate change meeting in Sao Paulo yesterday. "We still believe that the responsibility belongs to the developed countries." She said the reductions were voluntary, and not binding "targets", which she said should only be set for developed countries with higher emissions.Rouseff's intervention strikes at the core of the impasse in the global warming talks. Scientists say rich nations with long polluting histories, like the US, need to cut emissions by 25-40% by 2020 on 1990 levels, but the offers on the negotiating table fall short of this. Poorer developing nations need, say experts, to cut their emissions by 15-30% by 2020 compared to business-as-usual. By stepping up to its side of the deal, Brazil is making an open challenge to the US, where Senate legislation on climate change is near deadlocked.Half of Brazil's proposed cuts will come from a reduction in deforestation, while the remaining 20% relates to industry and farming."We are already an example to the world. But the fact that we are going to announce a significant objective does not mean we do not know that the responsible ones are the developed countries," Rousseff said.

Brazil's official position for the Copenhagen talks is expected to be announced before this weekend. Brazilian negotiators are already expected to announce plans to cut deforestation by 80% by 2020.Sergio Leitao, the director of public policies for Greenpeace Brasil, said that the proposed numbers "were good" but that the Brazilian government needed to take on "concrete targets" not voluntary reductions: "If it doesn't, nobody will do anything."

The recent emergence of rainforest defender, Marina Silva, as a potential presidential candidate for next year's elections, has helped propel the environment back onto the political agenda in Brazil.Rousseff, a Workers' party minister, who is president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva's favoured presidential candidate, is set to travel to Copenhagen next month to lead the Brazilian climate change delegation.

Case Study - BrazilCarbon sequestration = capture and storage of CO2 from earth’s atmosphere

(CIA: World FactBook, 2009)

BackgroundUnlike many countries, the majority of Brazil’s emissions do not come from fossil fuels. In fact, according to the Ministry of Mines and Energy, in 2005 the national electricity matrix was composed of 84% hydroelectricity, 4% biomass energy, 4% natural gas, 4% diesel and fuel oil, 1% coal and 3% nuclear energy (Greenpeace, 2008). As a result, fossil fuels are responsible for only 25% of the country’s emissions, of which 15% are from stationary sources (Cunha, et al., 2007). While 25% may seem low, in 2005, Brazil emitted a total of 360 million metric tons of fossil fuel carbon dioxide which is the 18th highest national emissions in the world. Still, this amount is significantly less than the United States (5,957 billion metric tons) or China (5,323 billion metric tons), who are respectively the highest carbon dioxide emitters globally (Miranda, E E, 2008). 

The cause for major concern in Brazil is deforestation, which is responsible for approximately 75% of Brazil’s emissions (Cunha, et al., 2007). However, due to environmentalists’ critiques and government projects such as the Action Plan to Prevent and Control Deforestation in the Amazon (2004), there has been an increasing focus on territory planning, environmental monitoring and incentives for sustainable production. Other plans and programs to reduce emissions include PROALCOOL, whose goal is to produce ethanol and use it to replace gasoline in lights vehicles , the Program of Production and Use of Biodiesel, which establishes a mandatory addition of 5 percent of biodiesel into petroleum diesel by 2013 , PROINFA, which aims at the increase of electrical energy generated from the wind, small hydro plants, and biomass , and the National Plan for Climate Change (PNMC), which has introduced the ambitious objective of reducing deforestation in the Amazon by 72% by 2017.

The growth of the industrial and transportation sectors and the rise of the consumption and generation of energy fueled an increase in Brazil’s emissions by 24.6% between 1990 and 2005 (Garcia, 2009). As a consequence, Brazil’s emissions profile has gradually started to change to that of a developed country’s profile. In 2006, per capita carbon dioxide emissions from the consumption and flaring of fossil fuels in Brazil were 2.01 metric tons per year, an increase of 23% as compared to the emissions in 1980 (Vaughan, 2009). 

Despite an increase in its emissions, Brazil has a large CO2 storage capacity of ca. 2000Gt (Ketzer et al., 2007). Moreover, most of the stationary sources are located in southeastern Brazil, where the majority of the petroleum fields and saline aquifers are located, encouraging for future carbon capture and sequestration implementation.

Emissions Reductions

Brazil has recently come up with a plan to reduce its predicted future emissions by 36-39% by 2020.  This will ultimately cause a reduction of their 2005 emissions by 15- 25% (Fransen, 2009).  They plan to bring about this reduction with the use of seven methods--low carbon development, renewable energy, biofuels, forest cover, vulnerability and adaption, as well as research and development (Lang, 2009). Deforestation, the number one cause of emissions of Brazil, is to be reduced by 70%; 80% in the Amazon and 40% in Cerrado, ultimately saving the planet from 4.18 billion tons of greenhouse gas emissions. They also plan to increase their use of renewable energy, such as hydropower and other alternative sources, as well as increase the

Brazilian ethanol program. The plan also includes the recovery of pastures, farming, ranching, and biological nitrogen fixation as well as the substitution of charcoal in pig iron production. Brazil has also doubled their monitoring of illegal wood plants and logging, and has begun to enforce their land licensing policy (Fransen, 2009).

Sequestration Potential

The United Nations has outlined a plan for Brazil to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions. This reduction would allow for 20% of its cuts to be implemented through carbon capture and sequestration (CCS). Petrobas, the leading oil company in Brazil, and the CARBMAP project have identified 39700 metric tons of potential CO2 storage a year in the Reconavo Basin through CCS; 3.54 million metric tons of CO2 in the Campos Basin with CCS using petroleum fields and saline aquifers; 0.25 million metric tons of CO2 in the Parana Basin with in situ, saline aquifers and coal seam sequestration; and 1.72 million metric tons of CO2 storage a year in the Potiguar Basin with CCS. Petrobas claims that these projects will sequester just under 8.16 million metric tons of CO2 a year combined. The CARBMAP project also includes Santos Basin, which has saline aquifers and petroleum oil fields that can store up to 73 million metric tons of carbon a year (Ketzer, et al., 2007; Lang, 2009). Given that Brazil has the potential to be at the forefront of emissions reductions, it remains to be seen whether its initiatives and participation in international environmental policy negotiations will move forward.

Amazon cattle ranching accounts for half of Brazil's CO2 emissionsRhett A. Butler, mongabay.comDecember 12, 2009

Cattle ranching accounts for half of Brazil's greenhouse gas emissions according to a new study led by scientists from Brazil's National Space Institute for Space Research (INPE).

The research found emissions from cattle ranching in the Amazon and thecerrado, a woody tropical grassland south of the Amazon rainforest, generated 813 million to 1.09 billion tons of carbon dioxide emissions between 2003 and 2008. The Amazon accounted for 499 to 775 million tons in CO2 emissions, while the cerrado accounted for 229-231 million tons.

Emissions from cattle ranching in other parts of the country amounted to 84-87 million tons over the period.

The study, which is based on Brazil's cutting-edge system for monitoring land use change, found that 75 percent of the rainforest cleared during the period ended up as cattle pasture, while 56 percent ofcerradoclearing results in pastureland.

The study estimates that each kilogram of Brazilian beef is associated with 300 kilograms (660 pounds) of CO2 emissions.

"We found that the cost of carbon emissions per unit of output exceeds the actual cost of the product at wholesale," said Roberto Smeraldi of Friends of the Earth - Brazilian Amazon, a co-author of the study.

The authors, led by Carlos Nobre of INPE, said the study shows that Brazil needs to focus on ways to reduce the environmental impact of cattle ranching in order to cut greenhouse gas emissions. They suggest that policy reforms, increased law enforcement, and improved land management practices could curtail deforestation and associated emissions. Payments for forest restoration and conservation could incentivize ranchers and forests to adopt more ecologically-responsible approaches. Further, certification of Amazon agricultural products to allow traceability through the supply chain back to farms and ranches where cattle are produced could foster better environmental performance among producers.

Brazil has offered to reduce emissions by nearly 40 percent from projected levels (14 to 19 percent below 2005 levels) by 2020. Most of the reductions would come from a 70 percent reduction in deforestation rates.

Brazil's proposed targets for reducing deforestation:

Deforestation emissions should be shared between producer and consumer, argues studyJeremy Hancemongabay.comNovember 19, 2009

Study focuses on beef and soybean production at the expense of the Amazon rainforest.

Under the Kyoto Protocol the nation that produces carbon emission takes responsibility for them, but what about when the country is producing carbon-intensive goods for consumer demand beyond its borders? For example while China is now the world's highest carbon emitter, 50 percent of its growth over the last year was due to producing goods for wealthy countries like the EU and the United States which have, in a sense, outsourced their manufacturing emissions to China. A new study in Environmental Research Letters presents a possible model for making certain that both producer and consumer share responsibility for emissions in an area so far neglected by studies of this kind: deforestation and land-use change.

It's not just China that is seeing emissions rise due to demand from other nations: deforestation of the Amazon in Brazil accounts for 75 percent of that nation's emissions, but most of the products produced on deforested land, such as soy and beef, are exported to other countries in Europe, Asia, and Africa.

"Brazil has some of the highest emissions from deforestation in the world and its exports of both soybeans and beef have grown dramatically in the last two decades," David Zaks, lead author and graduate student at the Center for Sustainability and Global Environment (SAGE) at the University of Wisconsin, Madison told Mongabay.com.

Brazil's high annual deforestation rates are currently supporting a massive agricultural industry that exports most of its product abroad: Brazil is the world's largest exporter of both beef and soybeans. Between 1990 and 2006, exports of beef increased by 500 percent. The soy boom, which began in the 1990s, did not cause as much direct deforestation, but pushed cattle farmers and small-land holders deeper into the forest.

From 1990-2006, EU countries and Asian countries were the primary importers of Brazil's soy, while importers of Brazil's beef came from around the world, including Eastern Europe, the EU, the Middle East, Asia, Africa, and other South American nations. Yet so far none of these nations have had to pay a cent for the environmental damage, including high carbon emissions, caused by the deforestation of the Amazon.

Zaks and his team have proposed a model to change this. According to their study when a product is exported half of the emissions should be the responsibility of the producing country and half of the importing country and its consumers.

"There is no 'right way' to proportion emissions between consumer and producer, but we did not think that assigning the burden of emissions to either Brazil OR the importing country would be logical," explains Zaks. "If emissions are assigned only to the importing country, there is a reduced incentive to decrease deforestation in the exporting country."

He adds that the study "chose to split them 50/50 as more of an illustrative example than a definitive answer."

The reasons behind sharing responsibility between producer and consumer is not just one of 'fairness', but rather the study argues that a model of shared emission responsibility will provide better incentives for reducing global deforestation. The model would give an economic

Pastureland and transition forest in Mato Grosso, Brazil (April 2009). Since 2003 Brazil has set aside 523,592 square kilometers of protected areas, accounting for 74 percent of the total land area protected worldwide during that period. Photo by Rhett Butler.

advantage for countries which are able to produce agricultural goods not dependent on recent deforestation. The agricultural industry's focus would be forced to shift, according to the paper, from deforestation of more land (extensification) to intensifying yields on already available land (intensification). This change would not only benefit the Amazon, but also the forests of Southeast Asia, where currently there is little economic incentive for agriculture crops, such as oil palm, to increase their yields.

"If agricultural commodities could be produced in another location, or use methods that have lower total carbon emissions, then demand would shift to those who could supply products with smaller carbon footprints," Zaks says. "Of course this assumes that the price of carbon is greater than the potential profit of increasing production on newly deforested land. We provide a methodology to 'internalize externalities' in the hope that the full cost of products will eventually be accounted for in the price."

Another part of the study's model would ensure that both consumers and the producing company would take responsibility for the long-term consequences of deforestation.

"If the emissions from deforestation are allocated to just the first year of production then the products that are produced in subsequent years do not have to pay for the carbon embodied in their products, and they are 'free-riding'. If the carbon emissions from deforestation are spread out over a longer time horizon, there is a limited disincentive to stop deforesting," explains Zaks.

Therefore the study picked a middle-of-the-road timeline—twenty years—and decided that the cost during that period should decline as it moves further away from the initial deforestation.

"The '20 year decline allocation' is a hybrid approach that assigns some of the responsibility of the carbon emissions from deforestation to the few years directly after deforestation at a higher rate than later years. This way, both the problems in the two other approaches are alleviated," he says.

Using the 20 year decline allocation model, the study found that between 1990 and 2006 soybean exports from the Amazon were responsible for 128 TgCO2e (128 million metric tons equivalent of carbon dioxide—roughly the annual emissions from electricity generation in Florida or Pennsylvania) while cattle exports were responsible for 120 TgCO2e. Cattle was responsible for less export emissions, since more cattle was consumed locally. According to the study, the EU—the biggest importer of Brazil's beef—imported a total of 61.8 percent of embodied (or indirect) emissions from 1990-2006 according to the study. The EU also imported 31.2 percent of embodied emissions from soy production in the Amazon. The cost of such percentages is not calculable as there is no set market price yet on carbon.

Of course, a carbon scheme such as this does pose difficult problems. One of these, especially when related to agricultural products, is how would adding a carbon tax on food affect the poor? Already the UN estimates that one billion people are going hungry.

"If this scheme were to be implemented, safety measures would have to be put in place to protect those who are food insecure," says Zaks, but he adds that a carbon tax might eventually help bring down grain prices. "If prices increased on high-carbon items (livestock, grain grown for livestock), demand for those items would decrease, which would subsequently increase the supply of those grains and decrease their price (and increase availability to the poor). Of course, those are untested assumptions and an economic model would need to be used to test that case."

Greenhouse gas emissions are, of course, not the only negative environmental impact from deforestation: biodiversity loss, decline of waterways due to a surfeit of nutrients, and local climate shifts such as rainfall decline have all been shown to follow clearcutting of rainforests. Zaks sees potential for adding these environmental impacts into the model at a later point, but more accounting of their impact needs to be done.

Of the ecosystem services provided by rainforests, "at this point, carbon emissions are the best quantified and also are closest to becoming widely monetized. There are some

Forest clearing in Mato Grosso. Photo by Rhett A. Butler.

Cattle herd in the Brazilian Amazon. Photo by Rhett A. Butler.

payment schemes that consider 'baskets' of ecosystem services, partly because the responses of other services are hard to measure. There are a lot of great research questions to be asked on how to incentivize reducing the impact of agricultural production on ecosystem services, and this paper just scratches the surface," Zaks says.

The study concludes that the importance of this model is self-evident: "while many mechanisms have been proposed to decrease rates of deforestation in the Amazon, very few of them include the ultimate drivers of deforestation: consumers of agricultural products."

BrazilEmissions profile and trendsThe majority of Brazil’s greenhouse gas emissions are carbon dioxide. Brazil’s carbon dioxide emissions profile is shown in the graph below.Figure 10 - Carbon Dioxide Emissions by Sector in Brazil 1994

Source: Brazil’s national communication to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (2004)

Of the land-use change and forestry emissions, 96% were from forest conversion to agricultural activities. Low-energy emissions arise from Brazil’s low overall energy intensity and high proportion of renewable energy. In 2000, around 94% of electricity delivered to the national grid was from hydroelectric sources. Of the remainder, a significant amount was produced with nuclear energy (around 1.5%) and biomass (around 3%). Generation of electricity in the country emits almost no greenhouse gases.Since the oil shocks of the 1970s, ethanol (manufactured from sugarcane) has been used in Brazil as a transport fuel, both blended with petrol and as a pure alcohol in specially designed vehicles. In 2002, biofuels provided 13% of road transport fuel. Sugar-cane bagasse and charcoal are used in industry in place of coal, which results in significant emissions savings. Overall, Brazil’s energy system is one of the least carbon intensive in the world.Between 1990 and 1994, overall emissions in Brazil grew by 5%, largely based on a 16% growth in emissions in the energy sector. The World Energy Outlook projects that Brazil’s energy-related carbon dioxide emissions will double by 2030, albeit from a low base.Mitigation responsesBrazil’s government runs a number of programmes to improve energy efficiency and conservation. Programmes include PROCEL, which aims to reduce electricity waste and promote the adoption of more energy-efficient technologies; CONPET, which aims to rationalise the use of oil and gas products without affecting levels of activities in economic sectors; and PRODEEM, which aims to supply electricity to isolated communities from local renewable sources.Natural gas is a growing energy source in Brazil and incentive policies have been developed to encourage its use where this will avoid the use of other emissions-intensive sources (such as fuel oil), including in thermal electricity generation. In the domestic production of natural gas, a programme has been initiated to reduce the degree of gas flaring, which will also reduce carbon dioxide emissions.Attempts have been made to expand education, public awareness and training on climate change issues. The National Environmental Education Programme aims to promote broad education of environmental issues in Brazil, and the “PROCEL in schools” and “CONPET in schools” programmes aim to expand the awareness of teachers and students on the importance of using electricity, oil products and natural gas efficiently. Government-operated websites on climate change also contribute to increasing public awareness.