By Marina Grossi
With greater political maturity on the issue—a process that has accelerated given the severity of its consequences for current and future generations—countries are increasingly likely to contribute to a more satisfactory outcome at the 20th Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (COP20), which will be held in Lima from December 1 to 12. There is a firm expectation that COP20 will be an important step in the preparation process for the global agreement to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, to be formalized a year from now at COP21 in Paris.
It's no secret that we're in a race against time. The IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) has warned of the need to limit temperature rise to 2°C to minimize impacts and risks to the human system and ecosystems. And despite these warnings, the development model remains heavily based on the production and consumption of non-renewable sources.
However, we shouldn't place all our hopes on international negotiators. Unilateral and bilateral initiatives by countries to replace fossil fuels with clean, renewable sources are already underway. The United States and China, the world's two largest emitters, have established a bilateral agreement to reduce their emissions. Details of the agreement will be released in 2015.
Since climate change entered the global agenda a little over 20 years ago, Brazil has been recognized for having the cleanest energy matrix compared to the world's major economies. However, with the water crisis in recent years, we have seen an increase in fossil fuels in Brazil's electricity mix.
At the end of this year, the Brazilian Business Council for Sustainable Development (Cebds) launched the Action 2020 program, an adaptation developed based on consultations with experts from the academic sector and civil society and direct development with the companies associated with the Council, based on the results of Action 2020, from the WBCSD (acronym in English for the World Business Council for Sustainable Development).
In Action 2020, society's objectives (or Must Haves, in the project's jargon) were formulated to identify specific areas that will need to be addressed in the country, jointly by civil society, businesses, and governments, by 2020. These objectives were identified for seven priority areas, including Climate Change. Within this block, six items were listed, for which impactful, scalable, and business-as-usual business solutions should be structured. These are: increasing the share of renewable energy in the national energy matrix to 50%; significantly reducing emissions related to agriculture and livestock; achieving zero net deforestation in all Brazilian biomes and improving control and monitoring systems; increasing the volume of investments and the number of projects focused on the low-carbon economy; identifying, proposing, and implementing adaptation strategies to increase the resilience of cities; and diversifying the freight and passenger transportation matrix and promoting sustainable mobility.
Establishing business solutions, of course, will depend on removing certain barriers, fostering partnerships, and establishing regulatory frameworks. The key issue is establishing mechanisms to make the low-carbon economy competitive.
