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Brazil’s role at COP30 at stake as the president is harming the environment and trampling human rights

Brazil can’t attend COP30 while harming the environment and trampling human rights in the process, they say.

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Independent experts with the United Nations Human Rights Council on Friday publicly called on President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva of Brazil to veto parts of a new law that would carve giant loopholes in the country’s environmental regulations.

The expert group of independent human rights rapporteurs said the law would roll back environmental protections, which would violate basic human rights non-regression principles. As written, the law would threaten “the human rights to life, health, an adequate standard of living, and a clean, healthy, and sustainable environment,” the experts wrote in a statement.

The bill at issue in Brazil, known as the General Environmental Licensing Law, was passed by the legislature on June 17. Lula has until August 1 to approve the measure, or to veto all or parts of it. The law reduces environmental reviews and public input opportunities for many activities, including road construction, logging and agriculture and some mining and dam construction. 

Rapporteurs carry out special projects for the United Nations Human Rights Council with mandates to “report and advise” on country or theme-based human rights issues. They can visit countries and intervene to address reported violations, as well as concerns of a broader nature, by sending formal communications to states and others.

In a July 23 statement, the Brazilian Academy of Sciences called the law “absurd,” writing that it “represents one of the greatest environmental setbacks in recent decades in Brazil because it would permit many projects with environmental risks without proper technical analysis or public consultation.

“In practical terms,” the Academy of Sciences wrote, “this means that the destruction of forests, mangroves, springs, and other ecosystems can occur without any rigorous assessment of the damage to the environment and, especially, to humankind.”

Considering that Brazil is hosting COP30, the annual global climate summit, in November, it’s remarkable that the new law “does not have a single mention of climate in the approved text,” the Brazilian Observatório do Clima, a coalition of nongovernmental groups and research institutes advocating for climate protection, wrote in a July 24 statement.

“Analyzing the climate impacts caused by projects should be one of the central themes of a law that seeks to standardize environmental licensing rules in the country,” the organization wrote, asking President Lula to veto the entire bill.

The U.N. rapporteurs previously raised similar concerns in a May 26 letter to the Brazilian government, while the measure was still working its way through the legislature. 

They emphasized the human rights impacts, writing that the regulatory changes “would disproportionately affect Indigenous Peoples, and Quilombola Afro-descendant communities, who are already severely impacted by environmental and climate harms, violating Brazil’s obligations of non-discrimination.”

The government responded on June 9 via diplomatic channels, characterizing the law as being aimed at supporting sustainable development. The letter from the Brazilian government to the United Nations also referred to other Brazilian laws protecting the environment and human rights, concluding that the concerns expressed by the rapporteurs may be premature.

The letter, in part, states, “it is evident that the Brazilian State has made significant efforts to preserve the environment and guarantee the rights of Indigenous Peoples and traditional communities, in alignment with its international commitments regarding human rights and sustainable development.”

Astrid Puentes Riaño, the U.N. special rapporteur on the human right to a healthy environment, said the response letter from the Brazilian government highlighted the tension between pro-business, pro-development interests in the legislature and members of Lula’s cabinet, who are inclined toward more environmental protection and climate action.

One section of the June 9 letter outlines some concerns the Brazilian Ministry of Human Rights and Citizenship has with the law, “particularly with respect to the possibility of automatic renewal of environmental licenses without proper reassessment of the risks of impacts on the environment and on communities affected by the activities or enterprises.”

Puentes Riaño said the current tug of war over the law is an example of a misunderstanding in many countries that people “have to pick between development or protecting the environment.” The either-or narrative that pits economic growth against environmental protection needs to change, she said, because under international laws and agreements it’s an obligation of the states to find ways to do it together.

She said a pair of recent advisory opinions from international courts on the environment and climate also emphasized the need to end that “false dichotomy.” 

Climate Progress or Treadmill?

In a July 3 advisory opinion, the Inter-American Court of Human Rights noted that the climate crisis can’t be separated from other environmental issues such as pollution and biodiversity loss. And on July 23, the International Court of Justice also published a landmark advisory opinion, concluding that states are obligated by existing international agreements and law to “use all means at their disposal” to prevent actions in their territories that are “causing significant harm to the Earth’s climate.”

Those recent rulings, Puentes Riaño said, should make it clear to the Brazilian government that new law would conflict with the country’s existing legal obligations to protect the environment, the climate and human rights.

While recent court rulings and other legal actions may mark small steps toward progress, they are not likely to have a significant global impact on a timescale that would help the climate much, said Reinhard Steuerer, an associate professor for climate politics at the Institute of Forest, Environmental and Natural Resource Policy at BOKU University in Vienna. 

“Such court activities may lead to changes in some countries, but it is very unlikely that they can make a significant global difference, mainly because the rule of law is already deteriorating,” he said. “To verify this claim, you don’t have to go to the U.S. Just look at Switzerland, where the national parliament decided in a majority vote to ignore the The Hague verdict.”

Steuerer was referring to a European Court of Human Rights ruling that the Swiss government is violating human rights laws by not taking more climate action, a ruling that the Swiss government rejected, claiming its climate policies meet the law. The case is still pending review by the European Union Council of Ministers.

“For me, the U.S. and the Swiss cases are strong signs of civilizational decline,” he said. “You first weaken the rule of law because societies are no longer willing to respect what it has to say, then you lose basic human rights.” 


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Bob Berwyn is an Austria-based reporter who has covered climate science and international climate policy for more than a decade. Previously, he reported on the environment, endangered species and public lands for several Colorado newspapers, and also worked as editor and assistant editor at community newspapers in the Colorado Rockies.

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