Ago 9th 2024 | Nº. 129

Editorial

This week, the second after the closely watched presidential election in Venezuela on July 28, Brazil’s regional leadership role remained at the center of the political conversation. On Monday, August 5, President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva was in Chile for a meeting with President Gabriel Boric. Unlike Lula, Boric has categorically rejected the result of the Venezuelan election, which various credible sources allege was riddled with manipulation by the government of Nicolás Maduro. Indeed, Maduro has refused to release the raw electoral data that would support his claim of victory. Lula’s government has been more circumspect in its public declarations about the election, insisting the government release more information while providing space for the opposition to press its claims. 

In an indirect reference to the different positions staked out by Brazil and Chile during this ongoing political crisis, Lula declared during a press conference with Boric that “each country has its own culture, each country has its own interests, its own political nuances. We cannot expect everyone to say the same thing, think the same thing, we are not the same. We are different and that is extraordinary because difference allows us to seek to find our similarities, the things that help us.” On Thursday, August 8, the Brazilian government issued a second statement in conjunction with the governments of Mexico and Colombia reaffirming its insistence that the Venezuelan government prove that it won the election. Notably, the Brazilian government has not called Maduro’s victory legitimate. 

As Brazil’s relationship with Venezuela appears to cool, its ties to Nicaragua—another country ruled by a nominally left-wing dictator—appear on the verge of being severed completely. This week, Brazil’s ambassador to Nicaragua was expelled in response to the Brazilian representative’s absence from formal celebrations of the 45th anniversary of the Sandinista Revolution. In response, on Thursday, August 8, the Brazilian foreign ministry announced that it was expelling Nicaragua’s ambassador. It is unlikely but no longer out of the realm of possibility that Brazil’s relationship with Venezuela, a country with which it has long been close under PT governments, could sour beyond repair.

Highlights

• Jewelry dispute. The Federal Court of Auditors (TCU) – an auxiliary body of the Brazilian Congress for accounting, asset, and budgetary matters – issued an opinion stating that President Lula can keep a watch valued at approximately US$20,000 that was given to him as a gift in 2005, during his first term as president. The importance of the decision lies in the fact that it should indirectly benefit former president Jair Bolsonaro, who is being investigated for having sold jewelry received as gifts while he was still in office. Bolsonaro's case will still be judged by the TCU, as was Lula's. The difference between them is the adoption of a rule in 2016 that only exempts presidents from having to return gifts when they are for personal use.

• Coup plotting punished. Until this week, the four out of eleven justices of the Supreme Court have voted to sentence Fátima Mendonça Jacinto, a pro-Bolsonaro activist, to up to 17 years in prison for her involvement in the coup plot on January 8, 2023. Fátima de Tubarão – as she became known because of the name of her city in Santa Catarina – invaded the Supreme Court headquarters and sent audio messages to her contacts saying that she had defecated in the office of Minister Alexandre de Moraes. The Supreme Court also formed a majority to sentence Débora Rodrigues dos Santos, who spray-painted the phrase “you lost, idiot” on the statue of sculptor Alfredo Ceschiatti, which stands in front of the building of the country’s highest court. Dos Santos has been detained since March 2024, awaiting the conclusion of her trial.

• Attacks on indigenous people. Farmers shot and wounded Guarani-Kaiowá Indigenous people, leaving at least five people injured in the Panambi-Lagoa Rica territory, where 126 families, including 18 elderly people and 70 children, live in Mato Grosso do Sul. The territory was recognized as Indigenous and registered as such by the federal government in 2011, but it was never officially demarcated. On Monday, August 5, the Regional Court of the 3rd Region suspended an order for repossession that had been issued two weeks earlier in favor of the farmers accused of committing the attacks. The National Public Security Force was sent to the region.

   

• Temporal framework. The tension in Mato Grosso do Sul is part of a broader escalation caused by the lack of definition in the legislation that deals with the demarcation of Indigenous lands that were not claimed prior to 1988, when the current Brazilian Constitution was enacted. The Supreme Court and the Brazilian Congress are experiencing a clash of powers over the definition of the rules of the so-called “temporal framework,” which deals with the issue. The court created a special committee to address the issue and is analyzing a request to suspend the law on the time frame approved by Congress. The request is made by the Articulation of Indigenous Peoples (APIB).

• Fire in the Pantanal. The Pantanal, an important biome in the central-western region of Brazil, which is home to 656 species of birds and 159 species of mammals, among other animals, is facing the worst fires in its history. The area affected is now double the size of the territory affected by the historic fires of 2020. At the time, more than 500 thousand hectares were charred. More than 23 aircraft are working to fight the flames. The dry season, which favors the fires, is expected to last until the end of September.

• Interest Rate War. The Monetary Policy Committee of the Central Bank issued a statement saying that it will not hesitate to raise the basic interest rate in Brazil again if it is necessary to use this mechanism to contain inflation. The rate, which is currently at 10.5 percent per year, has been gradually falling. Lula and the Central Bank disagree on the issue. The president is pushing for ever lower rates, but the financial agency, which has autonomy and is chaired by Campos Neto, the president of the Central Bank, appointed by Bolsonaro in the previous administration, is resisting. This week, SEBRAE, a public agency that advises small and micro entrepreneurs, published a statement saying that interest rates for the sector are varying between 44 percent and 51 percent, which is unjustified, given that the inflation target is 3 percent.

News from the WBO, Organizations and Social Movements

New researchers. The WBO announced this week the launch of its 2024-2025 annual cycle for research fellows. The selection process is open to both those interested in renewing their participation in the program and to other academics interested in collaborating with the WBO in three main areas: (1) US-Brazil Relations and Public Policy; (2) Democracy and the Far Right; and (3) Environment and Climate Change. The program is unpaid and non-residential. Candidates must submit their full application by 9 September 2024 using this form.

UN Special Rapporteur. Ashwini K.P,  the Special Rapporteur on contemporary forms of racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia and related intolerance for the United Nations Human Rights Council, will visit Brazil from August 6 to 16 to assess progress and challenges in achieving racial equality and eliminating racial discrimination, including structural racism. The visit will take place in Brasília, Salvador, São Luís, São Paulo, Florianópolis and Rio de Janeiro, and meetings will be held with federal and state authorities, members of racial and ethnic groups, civil society organizations, service providers, academics, and other stakeholders.

Black women. The Black Women Decide (MND) movement participated in the launch of the books We Are Ready: Lessons from Black Women’s Collective Leadership in the Brazilian Elections (2024) and The Radical Political Imagination of Black Women in Brazil and Latin America (2021) in Asunción, Paraguay on August 7. On August 29 and 30, the organization will participate in the event Colectiva 2024: Re·Conectar por la Democracia in Santiago, Chile, at the “Governance and Participation” panel, to discuss the democratic challenges facing Latin America and the Caribbean, at the invitation of the NGO Ciudadanía Inteligente.

Elections in Venezuela. On August 6, the Pact for Democracy held a conversation about the limits of democracy in Venezuela, focusing on the articulation of civil society in Latin America. The event was attended by Daniel Olascoaga, an expert in electoral processes and a member of the Electoral Observation and Integrity Network, and Isabella Picó, a Venezuelan civil society activist and coordinator of the Toma El Control project. The Brazilian Center for International Relations (CEBRI) also held the online event “The Crisis in Venezuela and the Role of Brazil” on August 8, which was broadcast live. The written content is available on Cebri’s YouTube channel.

Climate change. In a short video produced for social media by the Climate Observatory Caetano Scannavino, from Saúde e Alegria, talks to Thuane Nascimento, from Perifa Connection, about the impact of the luxury market on climate change. The program is part of a series of short videos produced by the Climate Observatory, a civil society network dedicated to building a decarbonized, egalitarian, prosperous and sustainable Brazil in the fight against the climate crisis. Watch the video here.

MST Podcast. The Landless Workers' Movement (MST) is publicizing on social media the existence of a podcast dedicated specifically to international issues. To listen, click here. The program “presents a monthly topic that connects the Brazilian public with various parts of the world, discussing the current situation and the main international issues.” The episodes are available for free on the main audio platforms.

Feature Article

The Brazilian Semi-Arid Region as a Global Example of Climate Adaptation

By Carlos Magno*

Information from the Convention of the Parties to Combat Desertification (UNCCD) warns that 70 percent of people in the world who suffer from various types of malnutrition live in dry areas, whether arid, semi-arid, or sub-humid. This classification of drylands by the United Nations considers the amount of rainfall (pluviometry) and evapotranspiration, which results in a balance that tends to be low or negative in these areas. Drylands are spread throughout the world and cover more than 41 percent of the planet's land. They are present on all continents, with large areas of land, such as the Sonoran Desert in the United States, the Sahel region in Africa, and much of Australia. 

However, what many people do not know is that Brazil, more specifically the northeastern region, is home to the most populous semi-arid region in the world with around 30 million people. This region has historically been known as Brazil's “problem region” due to the successive droughts that have caused deaths and displaced millions of people in recent decades. Despite the political, economic, and media power of agribusiness in Brazil, approximately 70 percent of the food for domestic consumption comes from family farming. According to the Food and Agricultural Organization of the United Nations, data from the latest Agricultural Census in 2017 reveal that half of the country's family farming is in the Brazilian Northeast. And this large territory, which also produces food, is threatened by a process of land manipulation, which is transforming semiarid conditions into arid conditions, in a process known as desertification, which was first identified in Brazil at the end of 2023 between the states of Bahia and Pernambuco. In addition to all these aspects, the predominant biome of the semiarid region is the Caatinga, which in Tupi means “white forest” due to its gray coloration when it loses its leaves during the dry season. This biome is almost exclusively Brazilian, with fauna and flora adapted to these climatic conditions.

The Caatinga needs to be considered a strategic biome in the debate on the Brazilian climate. It should be prioritized as a key to understanding socio-ecological resilience processes. Xerophilous plants, for example, exhibit an incredible adaptive capacity, losing all their leaves during dry periods to conserve water, hibernating during the dry season and saving water for more critical moments. We can also talk about the supply of native bee species that co-evolved with the Caatinga plants. In an era of climate change, such biological capacity becomes crucial. Unfortunately, this biodiversity continues to be undervalued and underfunded.

The current climate context also reveals a dispute of narratives in which the Brazilian Semiarid region has been treated as a mere generator of wind and solar energy, due to the significant availability of wind and sun. However, this simplifies and underestimates its complexity. Such initiatives, although important for a clean energy matrix, often do not consider the integral conservation of the biome, generating environmental and social problems in the region. Furthermore, the local knowledge of the communities that inhabit the Caatinga, which over generations has developed strategies to adapt to adverse climate conditions, is often forgotten, despite having an incredible potential for sharing knowledge about processes of adaptation to global warming.

A clear example of this is the droughts in the Amazon that are now beginning to gain notoriety in the press, as an indisputable sign of climate change, while in the Semiarid region, annual temporary droughts have existed forever. Imagine how much accumulated knowledge about these local populations could help in the exchange information with the Amazon populations so that we can collectively understand these characteristics that are here to stay. In the end, we are the same people, whether rural or riverside, who have never caused CO₂ emissions, but who will be the first to suffer their impacts.

Initiatives such as the "One Million Cisterns Program" by the Brazilian Semiarid Articulation (ASA) not only provide water through a social technology for collecting rainwater, but also promote dignity and environmental awareness. This program has already provided drinking water on an ongoing basis to more than 5 million people, establishing itself as one of the largest climate change adaptation programs in the world. The same goes for agroforestry family farming initiatives, such as those evaluated by the Sabiá Center, which are inspired by nature and the benefits for balanced food production.

It is time to recognize and value the Caatinga and the Semiarid regions. While the world seeks solutions to combat climate change, the Caatinga and its peoples already offer lessons in survival, adaptation, and resilience. Their role is fundamental, and it is our responsibility to bring them to the center of climate discussions. The Caatinga cannot continue to be the forgotten biome; on the contrary, we can be one of the solutions for climate adaptation in the world.

*Carlos Magno was born and raised in the semi-arid region of Brazil. He is a father, coordinator of the Sabiá Agroecological Development Center and focal point of the Semiarid Platform of Latin America, Fulbrighter 2022-2023, and Fellow in the climate area of ​​the Rockefeller Foundation.

Feature articles express the opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of the editors or WBO.