The president of the Brazilian Business Council for Sustainable Development (CEBDS), Marina Grossi, is the new member of the steering committee Carbon Price Leadership Coalition (CPLC), an international organization that brings together leaders from government, the private sector, academia and civil society to expand the use of carbon pricing policies globally. The invitation came from Canada's Environment Minister, Catherine McKenna, who chairs the organization. Currently, the CPLC steering committee has only six members and Marina is the only Brazilian.
Marina Grossi was a negotiator for Brazil at the Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change from 1997 to 2001, coordinated the Brazilian Forum on Climate Change from 2001 to 2003, and also participated in the negotiations for the Kyoto Protocol. Her appointment to the CLPC steering committee took place during the senior leadership meeting in Washington last Wednesday (19), when the committee’s size reduction and the names of the new members were announced. There are representatives from Colombia, Mexico, Turkey, Belgium, and Malaysia. The event promoted a dialogue on strategies for communicating opportunities and benefits of carbon pricing for different regions and business segments. One of the organization’s challenges is to gain the support of industrial segments that consume high levels of energy.
“Brazil’s participation in this important committee, which defines global guidelines on carbon issues, is a clear demonstration of the country’s importance in these discussions and the involvement of Brazilian private industry in regulating this market,” stated Marina.
In addition to the numerous challenges ahead, the number of companies that have adopted carbon pricing as a compensatory measure for their emissions has grown by 11% since 2016. In Brazil, through an initiative by CEBDS, 24 CEOs of large companies signed a letter of declaration of support for the implementation of carbon pricing. The objective of CEBDS is to make the mechanism a tool in the Brazilian strategy to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in order to comply with the Paris Agreement.
The letter is supported by the CPLC and was drafted in partnership with the Business Climate Initiative. The document states that carbon pricing mechanisms should boost investment, ensure the competitiveness of companies and encourage low-emission technological innovation in Brazil. “We are using this letter to engage important national stakeholders, such as senior leaders of the Ministry of Finance and the Central Bank,” says Marina Grossi.
