Becoming a Party to the UNFCCC

As the host of the "Earth Summit" (the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development, held in Rio de Janeiro), Brazil was the first country to sign the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). After being signed on 4 June 1992, the Convention was subsequently ratified by the Brazilian Congress on 28 February 1994. It entered into force for Brazil on 29 May 1994.

Establishing Coordination at the National Level

On 21 June 1994, Brazil created the Interministerial Committee for Sustainable Development (CIDES) by a Presidential Decree. CIDES was aimed at supporting the Brazilian President in the decision- making process related to strategies and national policy deemed necessary for achieving sustainable development according to Agenda 21. Three coordination bodies were established under this new committee: Coordination on Foreign Affairs (under the Ministry of Foreign Affairs), responsible for definition and preparation of the Brazilian position on international negotiating meetings; Coordination on Climate Change (under the Ministry of Science and Technology), responsible for the implementation of the Brazilian commitments under the UNFCCC; and Coordination on Biological Diversity (under the Ministry of Environment, Water Resources and Legal Amazon), responsible for the implementation of the Brazilian commitments under the Convention on Biological Diversity.

In August 1994, a small coordination unit -- Coordination on Global Change Research -- was established in the Ministry of Science and Technology to coordinate efforts to implement the Climate Change Convention in Brazil.

Organizing Work to Implement the Convention

As a developing country, the initial Brazilian commitment under the Convention is to develop (and periodically update) national inventories of anthropogenic emissions by sources and removals by sinks of all greenhouse gases not controlled by the Montreal Protocol, and to provide a general description of steps taken or envisaged to implement the Convention. These two components will constitute the so-called "Brazilian National Communication for the UNFCCC".

In order to fulfill its commitments, Brazil joined the U.S. Country Studies Program Initiative (USCSP), with a bilateral cooperation agreement aimed at giving technical and financial support for the preparation of the Brazilian greenhouse gas emissions inventory being signed in May 1995. As it is clearly stated in this agreement, however, the financial support offered by the U.S. was not considered sufficient to cover the costs of a complete inventory. It was estimated that these costs would total about US$ 7 million, an amount which includes all in kind contributions of the Brazilian government regarding, for example, acquisition of satellite imagery, the processing of satellite data, use of all related efforts being developed in Brazilian institutions, use of office space and equipment, and personnel costs of the coordination unit.

In regard to the additional funds needed, an enabling activity project proposal was developed with assistance from the United Nations Development program (UNDP) in June 1995. This proposal was then sent to the Global Environment Facility (GEF), the interim financial entity of the Convention. Soon thereafter the GEF sent a technical mission to Brasilia to analyze the Brazilian project proposal.

During this technical review there was a clear consensus that costs for inventory preparation in a continental country like Brazil -- with its vast area of 8.5 million square km and long distances between cities (normally greater than 1,000 km) -- would be very high. The estimated costs for meetings in Brazil were also estimated to be very expensive, mainly because of the necessity to put together experts from different regions of the country.

It was agreed that the GEF would support only a small portion (around 20%) of the preparation of the National Communication. The proposal was approved in October 1995, and the project document was submitted to GEF by the end of November 1995. The project was finally approved in June 1996.

Identifying Problems

Problems began arising almost immediately as the organization of the work related to implementation of the Convention was started.

Being that Brazil was the host of the Earth Summit, Brazilians have a general idea of global warming and ozone hole issues. In general, however, people are not aware about climate change or the Climate Change Convention. It is a very complicated technical issue that is difficult for non-experts to understand. Moreover, there are very few written materials available in Portuguese (the Brazilian national language), even for experts. The initial attempts to mobilize institutions and experts (made under the USCSP project, even with kind support from the Program’s director and his staff) were very difficult due to lack of knowledge about Brazilian commitments under the Convention and its related legislation, and associated costs and benefits for participating institutions.

Another difficulty faced is that climate change is not a priority issue in Brazil. There are many overriding priorities in social and economical areas, related to eradication of poverty, the improvement of health conditions, combating starvation, just to name the most urgent ones. This reality is reflected in the Brazilian budget, where no funds are available for preparation of the National Communication. It is also acknowledged that the full cost of National Communication preparation should be available through the interim financial entity, according to Article 4.3 of the Convention, and it would be very difficult to ask for additional funds as the Brazilian Congress ratified the Convention and thus would not easily allow new funds for this activity. In this regard, additional resources can only be obtained by enhancing existing activities in the current Brazilian budget to include inventory preparation activities. Of course, the re-discussion of the budget will represent a new effort for each involved institution.

Closely linked to this issue is the additional difficulty that in-country experts whose expertise could be used in the National Communication are allocated to projects that concern social-economical development and are therefore given higher priority. For instance, it is very difficult to re-allocate people working to improve agricultural technology related to beef and milk production to working in the assessment of livestock inventory emissions.

One last -- but not least important -- issue is that Brazil is not a big emitter. This is because Brazil is a tropical country with mild winters and very large rivers, and because over 60% of the Brazilian energy matrix is related to renewable sources. More than 95% of Brazilian electricity is generated by hydroelectric power plants, and there is massive use of biomass (through ethanol programs, the use of sugar cane bagasse for steam generation and charcoal used in the steel industry, etc.). Energy conservation programs seek additional improvements in energy production and consumption patterns in Brazil.

On the other hand, it is a very well-established principle in the Convention -- and is broadly agreed by Brazil -- that developed countries shall take the lead in the Climate Change Convention. Another very important principle in the Convention states that all countries have common but differentiated responsibilities. For Brazil this means that emissions from before the start of the industrial era (i.e., the 1940's) should be taken into account, seeing as the Convention is looking at concentrations of greenhouse gases with lifetimes that span more than 140 years.

The preparation of the Brazilian National Communication represents a huge effort. Even though there is a very good methodology to estimate the greenhouse gas emissions set down by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), such a general framework will probably not be applicable for Brazil in some circumstances.

Consider, for instance, the case of savanna burning. It is very difficult in practice to classify fires into the two broad categories defined in the IPCC methodology, "anthropogenic" and "natural". Some prescribed burning of savanna (very common in the dry season as a way to have regrowth of the dry grassland vegetation for cattle grazing) gets out of control and spreads out to very large areas. This is not helped by the fact that the humidity in savanna areas is normally very low during the dry season (last year the humidity in Brasilia reached 7%). In the beginning of the wet season, thunder storms are very common, and lightning can also cause fires. In this sense, it is very difficult to separate natural from prescribed burning of the savanna and thus difficult to apply the IPCC-defined concept of anthropogenic emissions.

Another problem has to do with the size of the regions that must be considered during an inventory. The area covered with savanna in Brazil comprises more than 2 million square kilometers; the Amazon forest comprises 3.5 million square kilometers. In the case of the latter, the costs involved make taking samples unfeasible. There are five sites currently being studied in different areas of the Amazon forest by the National Institute for Space Research (INPE). The facts that these areas are very difficult to access and that it is necessary to transport adequate equipment each site make this sampling approach very expensive and not practical (not to mention dangerous, with researchers facing the possibility of getting malaria fever). In the end, the cost of collecting, drying and weighing samples is greater than US$ 100,000 per hectare.

One solution envisaged by Brazil is the extensive use of satellite imagery for inventory assessments. INPE has been developing this methodology since 1989, and a very large experiment in using satellite images is currently being undertaken in Brazil. This experiment, however, relates mainly to deforestation in the Amazon forest area. For the assessment of emissions from savanna burning, the problem is only similar in relation to the vast area involved. This is because the density of the savanna vegetation is different from that of the Amazon forest, and because the problems that arise are new (such as smoke, small contrast in the infrared channels of the satellite, misinterpretation of regrowth areas, etc.).

Also, the classification of the Amazon forest is a very broad category. If we look at the detailed vegetation maps of the Amazon we find (in a still very aggregated scale) more than thirty different forest types, each with a different biomass content per hectare and, consequently, a different carbon content. In our proposed methodology the maps of vegetation will be superimposed onto deforestation area maps. However, this is still not enough; to have a better knowledge of the biomass content of several types of vegetation, field campaigns and laboratory research should be undertaken. There are only very few measurements of biomass and carbon content for the Amazon forest (and also for the other different vegetation in other regions) and normally these measurements were done in areas near the main cities in Amazon (where the universities are located), thus not reflecting the actual biomass content of deforestation areas.

Another common problem for developing countries is that information is a very expensive asset -- one which is not always affordable. This is a serious issue in some sectors, mainly due to the lack of a market (as is the case of non-commercial energy uses in Brazil, such as charcoal and fuelwood) but also when information searching represents a big effort. This applies to the waste management sector, which is sometimes under responsibility of very poor counties and states that do not have expertise (and financial resources) to gather data. This is also true in the case of cattle grazing, an activity spread all over Brazil and sometimes not market-oriented. In this regard the geographic distribution and technical management practices related to livestock (quality of feeding, waste destination, etc.) are not fully surveyed, mainly because of costs involved in better understanding a big cattle population (over 150 million head!).

Another difficulty arises from the fact that many countries face unique and specific conditions. This is true of Brazil, where some parts of the national inventory are not covered by the IPCC methodology. Just to cite a very few examples:

• Brazil has more than 5,000,000 cars fueled by neat ethanol;
• the normal Brazilian gasohol is mixed with 22% in volume of dehydrate ethanol;
• Brazil has a long tradition in sugar cane production (since the 17th century), and bagasse is widely used for steam production in the sugar mills and distilleries;
• Brazil is a big steel producer, and part of its production uses charcoal as energy source (and also to reduce the iron ore);
• Brazil is a big producer of pig iron, using as well charcoal produced in very rudimentary brick beehives stoves; and
• Brazilian universities are currently developing initial research projects to study methane emission from hydroelectric power plants in the Amazon region.

These are few examples where the IPCC methodology can not support the Brazilian inventory. Also, most of the default values in this methodology related to tropical forest and cattle raising in Latin America come from the very few studies related to emission assessments currently available in Brazil. These values cannot be extrapolated for the whole country (let alone the whole region).

Another difficulty faced is that while Brazil is on one hand a developing country, it is on the other hand a country with a very complex and dynamic economy. Brazil is one of the world’s largest producers of several products in sectors related to the generation of emissions, including cement, aluminum, chemicals, petrochemical feedstocks, and oil (more than 850,000 barrels are produced each day). In the agricultural sector, the Brazilian rice production rate is one of the highest in the world; in the Brazilian case, however, the emissions related to rice production are not important due to the method of production used (dry paddies).

This description of the difficulties only raises another problem. As can be seen above, the preparation of a complete inventory of greenhouse gas emissions is a multidisciplinary effort involving several institutions and experts spread throughout all regions of the country. Actually, the institutional arrangement currently being established for the preparation of the national communication involves (up to now) more than 60 institutions, with more than 300 experts expected to be involved directly in the project. Coming from different sectors (such as energy, industry, agriculture, waste management or forestry), these experts have different backgrounds and are normally not aware of climate change issues, how to prepare an emission inventory, what the Convention is, what Brazilian commitments are, etc.

Identifying Solutions

In summary, the complexity of organizing this work in Brazil pointed to the need for a new approach. It was realized that this new approach should aim to facilitate the coordination of the development process of the national communication.

It is actually a huge coordination effort because of geographic distribution of institutions and experts and also because of the multidisciplinary nature of the expertise involved. A single coordinator would not succeed (independent of his/her expertise and proficiency) in managing all of the information available, and would not be able to review and assure the quality of all of the work done in different sectors.

A big effort will also be required to publish material related to climate change issues (such as the text of the Climate Change Convention) in Portuguese. This material would help not only in the preparation of the Brazilian National Communication, but also in increasing the awareness of the general public.

The set up of the international agreement with the USCSP had both advantages and disadvantages. On the one hand, it offers another way to get expert assistance and technical review from abroad and is therefore profitable. On the other hand, it creates new difficulties, such as the need (since the very beginning of the project) to have reports written in English .

During the initial discussions for the preparation of the proposal for an enabling activity to support Brazil’s preparation of its national communication, UNDP/GEF experts suggested the use of video-conferencing or executive television (a technology already existing in Brazil for some time).

This idea was very interesting, but had several drawbacks. These drawbacks included that it has high costs, is technology intensive, and would be very difficult to implement in small cities. Within this idea, however, one could find the right direction. It was worthwhile to develop the idea further.

We started to think about how we could use the Internet. It was September 1995, and the Internet was just beginning to grow in Brazil. There was an institutional advantage (and synergy) from which to profit: the Brazilian science and technology research network (among federal universities) was already managed by the Brazilian Ministry of Science and Technology (MCT), the institution responsible in Brazil for the implementation of the Climate Change Convention. The Ministry was responsible also for managing the existing network for the Internet in Brazil. In this connection there were expertise and server facilities available in the Ministry.

Another advantage was that the costs involved would be rather small: this effort would be labor intensive instead of technology intensive, based mainly on use of software and normal PC computers available everywhere in Brazil. Moreover, it would be based on the expertise of trained people already working in the Ministry.