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Brazil

Care About Climate

Core analysis conducted and presented by Karina Penha and Cintya Feitosa of Brazil in June, 2021.

Executive Summary

Executive Summary of Brazil’s Nationally Determined Contribution (INDC)

Part 1: Highlights

Brazil's 2020 NDC includes brief mention and recognition of the participation of women, indigenous peoples, local communities, and civil society as important parts of the planning process.

Part 2: To the Government of Brazil

Having a mention of gender in the local NDC can be seen as an advance, but the real participation and listening of our voices in the decision-making process, construction of climate policies, and solutions for effective mitigation and adaptation for the climate crises don’t exist in the actual government.

So, the Recommendations for the Brazilian government to support the most ambitious climate action possible, are to:

  • Not just making a reference to the NDC as "a gender-responsive manner” when that doesn't represent the truth. 

  • It is necessary to abandon superficial discourses and follow the discussions about intersectionality that have been happening in Brazil and in the world in order to think about public policies and advance in discussions and real solutions.

  • Get enable a real insertion of gender issues in climate governance spaces and also the number of women on it. 

  • Prioritize the gender issues in the climate agendas and guide it in order to influence other spheres and actors in the debate. 

  • Improve consultations and real participation of  civil society facilitating and not hindering their participation in debates and decision-making spaces.

  • Bring the people from traditional communities, indigenous and peripheral people to the center of debates and strive to make possible that information and decisions that have a direct impact on their lives reach them. 

  • Create and strengthen local real spaces for interactions with civil society, rather than highlighting deactivated spaces.  This extends to decision-making places such as UN conferences. 

  • It is important to recognize the work and vast experience of civil society on gender issues and include their collective agendas on NDCs, after all, many of them will only be achieved through the work and support of non-governmental sectors. 

Part 3: To the Brazilian Civil Society

  • As with other shortages, it is necessary to highlight the lack of texts that are coherent with the reality and need for gender issues in our country when critical analysis of NDCs is carried out.

  • We mustn't only wait for government policy changes, it is necessary to continue working together to reclaim our place, as we have been making already.

  • Dialogue and cooperation must always be the first option to advance gender issues into the climate agenda, but when this is not enough or heard, pressure on decision-makers becomes necessary for advances to happen and the solutions can be implemented. 

  • Making intersectionality happen in practice is a challenge, but we are on the right path, we cannot stop while the plurality of all that we are is not represented in climate policies that mention the importance of our participation, but do not facilitate, encourage or support us on it.

NDC Analysis

Introduction

Brazil is a developing country, the largest country in Latin America, and has one of the world’s greatest tropical rainforests--vital areas to the world’s survival. The country faces several challenges regarding poverty eradication, education, public health, employment, housing, infrastructure, energy access and many other socio-environmental inequalities. 

The Brazilian population is made up of 51.8% women and 48.2% men (PNAD 2019). For the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics (IBGE), statistics on gender clarify how society creates different social roles and behaviors related to men and women, establishing patterns of what is proper for females and males. Based on these understandings, diverse and/or unequal relationships in the various dimensions of social life are established  (IBGE, 2019).

We know that effects of climate change affect populations in different ways, and gender is an important variable in a context of inequalities and asymmetric relationships. Men and women relate to the environment in different ways: they use natural resources according to the different roles they play, the needs and responsibilities they have, and also the power relations that permeate our society. And due to social vulnerability, women are more exposed to the negative effects of climate change (UN WOMEN, 2021).


The Brazilian Nationally Determined Contribution (NDC)

The article 23 of Decision 1 / CP.21 of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, which adopted the Paris Agreement, establishes that countries with goals until 2025 must present a “new” NDC by the end of 2020. And that's why Brazil, which presented goals until 2025 in the first NDC, presented a “new one” last year, 2020. 

The NDC proposal updated by Brazil in 2020 is a one-page document with an eight-page explanatory annex. The document has two goals: the confirmation of the commitment made in 2015 of reducing by 37% the emissions in relation to 2005 levels by 2025 and officializing the indicative target of 43% reduction in 2030. It brings an “indicative long-term objective” of achieving carbon neutrality by 2060.

It warns that the development of a long-term strategy “depends on the functioning of the carbon markets proposed in the Paris Agreement”. Therefore, Brazil did not respond to the Paris Agreement's invitation to deliver a long-term strategy in 2020 (OC, 2020).

A Feminist Perspective Analysis of Brazil’s NDC

We can find a reference to gender and women in the annex of the Brazilian Updated NDC (2020)  -- “Information to facilitate clarity, transparency and understanding of Brazil’s NDC”.

“ 4. Planning processes: 

(a) Information on the planning processes that the Party undertook to prepare its nationally determined contribution and, if available, on the Party’s implementation plans, including, as appropriate:

 (i) Domestic institutional arrangements, public participation and engagement with local communities and indigenous peoples, in a gender-responsive manner:

 At the governmental level, the institutional framework for the elaboration and implementation of public policies in the area of climate change is set by the Interministerial Committee on Climate Change, instituted by Decree 10.145/2019. 

Articles 5, 231, and 232 of the Brazilian Constitution establish ample rights and guarantees for all Brazilian citizens, paying due attention to the special needs of women and indigenous peoples. Brazil is also a party to the ILO Convention 169 on Indigenous and Tribal Peoples” 

The nature of this reference includes: “a gender-responsive manner” where the government has or should have committed to gender-mainstreaming or taken gender into account across one or more components of the NDC, what is noted as “gender-sensitive” where women are positioned in the NDC as stakeholders as having a stake in climate change-related decision-making (CGIAR et al, 2016).

The Original NDC (2015) addresses the gender issue in the first page where talks about implementation policies, measures and actions to implement Brazil’s iNDC:

“The Government of Brazil is committed to implementing its iNDC with full respect to human rights, in particular rights of vulnerable communities, indigenous populations, traditional communities and workers in sectors affected by relevant policies and plans, while promoting gender-responsive measures”

Even with the localization of gender mentions, it is important to analyze some specific points of the original and Updated Brazilian NDC about gender approach.

Initial and Updated NDCs

First NDC, Intended NDC (INDC, September 2016): Single-year target for 2025; indicative values for 2030 for reference purposes only. 

About its development: No mention of process for developing NDC.

Gender reference: The Government of Brazil is committed to implementing its NDC with full respect to human rights, in particular rights of vulnerable communities, indigenous populations, traditional communities and workers in sectors affected by relevant policies and plans, while promoting gender-responsive measures.

Updated NDC (December 2020): 2005 to 2025 and 2005 to 2030. 

About its development: The updated NDC describes the interaction between government and civil society through the Brazilian Forum on Climate Change. However, there is no mention of how much civil society had the opportunity to weigh in on this NDC. It simply states that the current NDC is based on experiences and lessons learned from developing the 2015 iNDC.

Gender reference: In the section of the annex with more details on the NDC on existing domestic institutional arrangements and public participation and engagement, Brazil briefly mentions its Constitutional articles that "pay due attention to the needs" of women and indigenous peoples.


Gender in NDC Development

Since the first version of the NDC, one of the strategies of the  Brazilian civil society to participate in the process is suggesting a proposal for the Brazilian NDC before the federal government presents the official version. It is a way to influence the insert of some crucial social issues on it. The civil society version of the Brazilian NDC was presented in 2015, and again in 2020, conducted by Observatório do Clima Climate Observatory, a network which brings together more than 50 environmentalist organizations.

The Updated version of 2020 includes  a gender-focused perspective , developed throughout the Gender and Climate working group, created in 2019 and  composed by members of the Climate Observatory and guests from other collectives, NGOs, movements and activists groups. 

In addition to thinking about how to insert gender,  according to Priscilla Santos, an expert lawyer in environmental and urban law who had participating in this construction, the objective was implementan intersectional and transversal approach,  i.e. considering the aspects that differentiate some populations as vulnerable groups and permeating the NDC components (mitigation, adaptation and implementation).

The 9 proposals constructed by the Gender and Climate WG from civil society included: 

  • Synergy with the UN Sustainable Development Goals from a gender perspective; Mitigation proposals that should take into account gender and race responsive criteria; Intersectionalities suggestion adaptations and incorporation of the UN Gender Action Plan Implementation mechanisms that prioritize groups in vulnerable situations, helping to combat social inequalities;

  • Participatory planning processes, and movements to leverage and foster partnerships with countries in the global south.

Six of these nine proposals were adopted in the civil society NDC; but unfortunately, this time the NDC presented by the Brazilian federal government had no influence from the civil society proposal. In fact, it is a setback in relation  to the first version, from 2015. 

So, we can ask what kind of “stake in climate change-related decision-making” present in the NDC women in Brazil are really having in the construction of Brazilian climate policy. 

After the submission of the updated NDC to the UNFCCC, Brazilian Civil Society made a complete analysis of the document called “NDC and carbon “pedaling”: How Brazil reduced the ambition of your goals in Paris Agreement”. However, this document doesn't make any mention of how the “gender inclusion” concept remains empty and without popular participation in the construction of that important document.

The women's participation in Brazilian climate governance decisions

This current year a report evaluated the female participation in the construction of the Brazilian climate policy with the composition, by gender, of the participants in the spaces created since the 1990s in Brazil and which still operate today as: the Interministerial Commission on Global Climate Change (CIMGC) and the Interministerial Committee Climate Change (CIM): dedicated to governmental articulation.

The result of the report demonstrated that male participation predominates in all sectors assessed with the exception of the Adaptation, and not in spaces for political articulation or technical advice, linked to mitigation. Second Lígia B. & Júlia Campos (2020), this inequality of participation suggests the historical centralization of technical and scientific issues on men and social and vulnerability issues on women, with negative consequences for gender equality and, possibly, for climate policies. The women act mainly as guests and not representatives, that is, without decision-making power. In practice, therefore, there is little female participation in climate policy decisions.

But this is far from being a problem only for Brazil, an international report by UN Women released in 2020 showed that 67% of decision-making positions are occupied by men under the Climate Convention, the Kyoto Protocol and the Paris Agreement. The UNFCCC process is far from gender equality. In 2019 the Women made up only 39% of national delegations, a decrease from 40% in 2018. Even more disconcerting is the fact that only 21% of women led their delegations, which is, again, a decrease from the previous year. According to WEDO (2020), if this pattern continues, we will not achieve gender parity in heads of delegation until 2068. 

The youth female participation in climate change process 

It is not common to see the youth female participation detached in the decision-making process or in the construction of the government's climate policies in Brazil. We don’t have mentions about them in the Brazilian NDC nor in the Gender Action Plan but this participation is happening and  has been very strong. 

Projects as “Elas no Clima” (She on Climate), “Brota no Clima” (Come to the Climate), platforms as “EmpoderaClima” by Care about Climate and “Gênero e Clima” by Brazilian Climate Observatory Network, programs as “EduClima” (Climate Education Program) and “MUVUCA” (Climate Activism Youth Program from NOSSAS) and youth organizations as “Engajamundo”, “NOSSAS” and “Clímax Brazil” are some examples of the great Youth mobilization in Brazil who has working hard to think about collective actions and solutions to face the climate crisis reclaiming climate justice between the #SexifyTheClimate Movement that has nothing to do with sexism but struggles to face it, trying to create attractive ways to bring more young people and women to the climate debate.

An important milestone of that happens in 2016 during the pre-Conference of the Parties (COP) meeting where youth represents for civil society (including me) demanded from the national government the lack of transparency about the six elements of ‘Action for Climate Empowerment’ (ACE) – Education, Training, Public Awareness, Public Access to Information, Public Participation and International Cooperation  agreed in the Brazilian NDC to Paris Agreement. As a result,  an official information portal was created to follow the Brazilian government work in ACE, the EduClima, that unfortunately, seems to have no continuation in the current government and continues with no updated news of this year, until this moment.

Democratizing the theme of climate change among young women from peripherals and communities and lead decision-makers, is to value the intersectionality of themes, that is, to have an integral look at the relationship between social, class, race, and gender causes.


Intersectionality in NDC Development

Taking into account the concept of intersection, indigenous women, quilombolas women, black women, women from the periphery, farmers, single mothers and heads of families are impacted in different ways. 

Gender inequality, especially in poor countries, makes women more vulnerable to natural disasters caused by climate change. But in addition to the small participation of women, the composition of many networks is still a space made up mostly of people from the Southeast of Brazil, working in the with little or no regional representation which has as result the centralization of the debate on climate change. 

The most affected women are still not being listened to in discussions about their lives and communities and are not being  invited to the decision making process, which really can turn our goals for climate mitigation and adaptation totally not achieved. It is necessary to increase the diversity of participants in climate governance in Brazil. This is a way to ensure that climate policy is more effective and aware of the population's reality (considering their different vulnerabilities and contributions). 

Including true diversity of women that exist in Brazil, bringing them to the center of the debate or taking the debate to them is as emergencial as the defense of forests, reduction of emissions, reaction of the economy and green new deals.

Intersectionality in the Gender Action Plan by UNFCCC

The adoption of a new Gender Action Plan (GAP) was one of the major outcomes of the last UN climate conference after nearly two weeks of extensive climate talks at COP25 in Madrid in December 2019. However, there is still much to be done to guarantee the sanction of human rights and gender equality. Countries are under pressure to sign and implement the Paris Agreement so that gender equality can advance with a warming limit of 1.5 degrees Celsius.

In 2020 I was one of the guest speakers in the painel of the Brazilian Conference of Climate Change who reune civil society, governments, social movements and scientific community to think about the implementation of the Brazil NDC and to reflect on the adoption of the Action in gender. We know that the Gender Action Plan addresses various problems, with a focus on the implementation and expansion of just climate solutions, from an intersectional perspective.  But it is needed to "tropicalize" and bring it to our domestic agenda incorporating it into the climate action of the countries of the Global South with a special e sensitive view for Latin America and the Caribbean.

Last year a study of JAMA (2020) comproved that Climate change increases risks during pregnancy and black women are the most affected but the GAP doesn't make mention of black and peripheral women, forest women, or other traditional communities beyond the indigenous people, that also are very plural.  

As Bridget Burns said: “We know we are far from reality. The GAP is a tool to advance gender equality and effective climate solutions, but gender equality does not live in the GAP. It is done through fair and audacious climate actions”. The fight for climate stabilization will always be incomplete without a interseccional gender-based perspective.


Conclusion

When comparing Brazil with other countries, having a mention of gender in the local NDC can be seen as an advance, but the real participation and listening of our voices in the decision-making process, construction of climate policies, and solutions for effective mitigation and adaptation for the climate crises don’t exist in the actual government. So, the reference included as "a gender-responsive manner” where women are positioned in the NDC as stakeholders of climate change-related decision-making doesn't represent the truth. 

The real insertion of gender issues in climate governance spaces has happened through the extensive work from civil society and some initiatives of the private sector.

It is important not to lose sight of gender issues in the climate agendas and to guide it in order to influence other spheres and actors in the debate. We mustn't only wait for government policy changes, but work together to reclaim our place and press the decision-makers on it now. We still have a lot to do.

References Cited

Useful Links:

Authors

Karina Penha, Brazil NDC Ambassador: Karina Penha ia Biologist and socio-environmentalist from Maranhão, Brazil. SUSI Alumna in the International Exchange Alumni by the US Department. Mobilizer in NOSSAS Human Rights NGO leading MUVUCA - Climate Activism Program for Amazon Youths. Articulator of Engajamundo Youth NGO where has coordinated the Working Group on Climate Change and four youth delegations in the UN Climate Conferences. Assistant for youth engagement in the Amazon region at "Fé no Clima", an initiative of the Institute of Religion Studies (ISER) and IRI - Interfaith Rainforest Initiative. Part of the Gender and Climate Working Group from the Brazilian Climate Observatory and of the Core Team for "Bridge Building for Climate Action Program" for climate activists from Latin America and the Caribbean in 2020.


Cintya Feitosa, Brazil NDC Mentor: Cintya is project coordinator for the Climate Policy program at Instituto Clima e Sociedade (iCS) in Brazil. She has a master's degree in management, specializing in sustainability, from the São Paulo School of Business Administration at the Getúlio Vargas Foundation (FGV EAESP), with research on the adaptation to climate change (2019). She is a specialist in international relations from the University of Brasília (2013), and has a degree in social communication and journalism from the Centro Universitário IESB (2010). She has worked in the planning of coordination and communication actions in political mobilization, research in sustainability and socio-environmental causes since 2010.