Next Friday (10/30), from 11 am to 12:30 pm, a webinar will be held on one of the most important debates on the climate negotiations agenda and a priority issue at COP-26: how nature-based solutions (NbS) can address environmental, economic and social problems. The event is being held by CEBDS, iCS (Instituto Clima e Sociedade) and the Brazilian Forum on Climate Change (FBMC). The presentation will be by Ronaldo Seroa da Motta, professor of Economics at the State University of Rio de Janeiro (UERJ). The moderator will be Shigueo Watanabe, from ClimaInfo. Confirmed to participate in the debate are Gylvan Meira, technical specialist in the area of Climate Change, at ITV Desenvolvimento Sustentável, and Caroline Dihl Prolo, lawyer and researcher in the areas of international environmental law and climate change. head of the environmental law department at the Stocche Forbes law firm. The government must also send a representative.
According to Seroa, in a recently published study of his authorship entitled “Opportunities and barriers in financing nature-based solutions”, to the Nature-based solutions can often be used in conjunction with other interventions. The paper details how NbS and Natural Climate Solutions (NCS) play a crucial role in removing and sinking greenhouse gases (GHG). “There are the so-called Natural Climate Solutions (NCS), which directly target conservation and management actions for ecosystems in order to offer climate mitigation linked to sustainable development goals. The potential for these actions is enormous and Brazil alone represents approximately 20% of this global potential. Brazil’s potential is dominated by protection and reforestation, but there is an important participation of soil and pasture management in agriculture. In other words, this potential confirms the country’s competitive advantages in offering credits associated with NbS/NCS.”
According to Marina Grossi, president of CEBDS, and Ana Toni, executive director of ICS, who wrote the publication’s foreword, “a nature-based economy can bring annual business opportunities worth US$10 trillion that could create 395 million jobs by 2030 worldwide, according to the World Economic Forum. This represents a path to resuming sustainable development of people and nature with greater resilience to future impacts that can no longer be ignored.”
Seroa explains that due to controversies regarding several elements of the design of instruments of international cooperation, in particular those related to environmental integrity, Article 6 of the Paris Agreement (international commitment discussed among 195 countries with the aim of minimizing the consequences of global warming) has not been regulated to date. “Faced with this impasse, a group of 32 countries created their own rules for the offset market (emission reductions) international, regardless of what the parties would be negotiating, adopting the San Jose Principles for High Ambition and Integrity in International Carbon Markets, which emphasize procedures to ensure additional, permanent and non-leakage emissions (when protecting one piece of land leads to deforestation elsewhere) and double counting. Such principles can guide future negotiations on the regulation of Article 6”, argues Seroa.
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