On this World Environment Day, I propose a pause to reflect on the progress we are making, the bottlenecks that require alternatives, and also what challenges we face in the near future so that we can build a more sustainable life, whether in the core of our businesses or on an individual level. At least three points are crucial and deserve our attention and the focus of our current debates, especially in Brazil.
The first is the issue of climate change and how its changes directly affect us. There is a consensus that, in order to meet the goals of reducing the planet's temperature by 2 degrees Celsius, as per the Paris Agreement, we will have to review the use of current fuels, promoting a transition to the adoption of renewable energy as our main source. Adopting mechanisms that put a price on the environmental impact of these fuels could be an alternative to financing new renewable energy.
In recent weeks, the truck drivers' strike has highlighted our total dependence on fossil fuels and highways, and how we still have a long way to go to reverse this, thinking, for example, about linking new concessions to the expansion of railways, or the adoption of less polluting fuels. The strike has made the direct relationship between diesel and greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions even more evident: Air Quality Information from the Environmental Company of the State of São Paulo (Cetesb) indicated a 50% drop in pollution in the capital of São Paulo during the strike. Given this reality, creating a carbon market in Brazil is more than necessary, it is urgent.
The second point, which has already been taken on board by major representatives of the industrial sector but needs to be replicated throughout Brazil, is the urgent need for greater attention to water collection, efficient use and, above all, the adoption of reuse techniques. The waste recorded throughout history and the impression that resources are abundant and endless are no longer part of our current scenario. Our concerns about the real finiteness of water are an unquestionable reality. Including in the calculation of investments the risks of increasingly present scarcity and the costs of treating water in the industrial process, as well as forms of reuse, are processes already taken on board by industry, even though Brazil does not have national legislation to regulate this practice. Providing a law in this regard is another of our urgent needs, as is promoting a basic sanitation shock in the country. It is no longer acceptable to work with 21st century reuse technologies (which must be expanded), and on another front, to be stuck in the 19th century, with regard to the treatment of our sewage.
Along the same lines, the third of our urgent needs is our relationship with the circular economy as a whole, and not just in relation to water. Conscious consumption, the efficient use of natural resources, the possible recycling of all materials, and the reuse of products, whether in industrial processes or in individual life, should dictate the rules of a country that aims for sustainability. This concept should have ceased to be urgent and should be present and constant in our reality. In many cases, we have seen the replacement of property by services, such as cars, for example, which indicates that this is an irreversible trend that will be expanded to the most diverse sectors.
These three urgent issues are part of a broader document that the Brazilian Business Council for Sustainable Development (CEBDS) is preparing to present to presidential candidates as fundamental points to be considered in order to prepare the country for a sustainable world. A world that is not only about the future, but is urgently needed in the present.
* Article originally published in Brazil Newspaper.
