Brazil’s Rousseff pledges 37% cut in greenhouse gas emissions

São Paulo – The Brazilian president Dilma Rousseff said this Monday (28th) in her opening speech at the 70th United Nations General Assembly, in New York, that Brazil is a welcoming, multi-ethnical country that is looking forward to welcoming refugees who leave their countries looking for security and a chance to rebuild their lives.

Speaking at the UN’s Sustainable Development Conference ahead of the General Assembly, President Dilma Rousseff laid out the commitment Brazil will bring to the climate change summit: a 43% drop in carbon emissions and zero deforestation by 2030.

The 2015 United Nations Climate Change Conference in Paris, France, which takes place in December, aims to create a legally binding and universal agreement to reduce the effects of human-caused climate change.

“Brazil will keep on moving in the democratic pathway”, she said. Brazil still holds the largest untouched rainforest in the world.

“We have one of the world’s largest populations and GDP, and our targets are as ambitious or more ambitious than those of developed countries”, she said.

As governments begin to seek the trillions of dollars needed to help achieve new sustainable development goals, Rousseff reminded global leaders on Sunday that “poverty is a multidimensional phenomenon”.

Brazil also pledged to offset emissions coming from regulated deforestation, but has not provided details. The country’s currency is down more than 30 percent this year as the administration struggles to plug a growing fiscal deficit in the midst of a political crisis triggered by the corruption scandal engulfing state-run oil company Petrobras.

“We can’t very well go back to our constituents and say we tried 1.5 (degrees) and then two and that won’t happen”, Foreign Minister Tony De Brum said. She said Rousseff, even with her background in the oil industry, is beginning to recognize that the future is in an increasingly decarbonized economy. “This pledge won’t allow us to get to that number”, she said.

That’s precisely what Brazil’s INDCs are meant to achieve, according to Rousseff.

Brazil has committed to increase its renewable energy to 45 percent of its energy mix, she added, noting that worldwide only 13 percent of energy comes from renewable sources. Another goal is to totally end illegal deforestation as well as other emission cutting moves should put Brazil in a good position, but with decades of deforestation, it could be too little too late.