Lula: West should stop dictating Brazil how to manage Amazon forest

We have often implicitly criticized the 'neocolonial' attitudes of NGOs, governments and environmental agencies from the West when it comes to the issue of deforestation and development in the South. Their idea that the world's rainforests and the environment is a 'universal' good and must be protected is of course entirely legitimate. But where they go wrong is to think that their decision making process and their discourse on how to manage those forests must be equally 'universal'.

Developing countries rightly perceive this approach as being slightly neocolonialist and interventionist (earlier post). They feel their sovereignty is being eroded and that they're being, once again, dictated by the West on which development paradigm to follow (earlier post). When we wrote this, at the Biopact, we have received some angry reactions from these NGOs.

But now, Brazilian President Luis Inacio Lula da Silva, says something quite similar. In a speech in Rio de Janeiro, he has accused developed countries of failing to do enough to fight against global warming. President Lula said it was time for wealthy countries to do more to reduce gas emissions. And he called on them to stop preaching on what to do with the Amazon rainforest.

President Lula said developed nations applied a double standard in their approach to global warming. He has accused wealthy countries of not doing enough on the environment before, but he has rarely been this direct. Lula said the West and the rich countries were skilful at drafting agreements and protocols, like the Kyoto treaty, to appear as if they were doing something to reverse dangerous geenhouse gas emissions. In practice, however, he said the results proved otherwise.

Deforestation and national sovereignty
President Lula was most adamant on the issue of deforestation. Developed countries, he said, had nothing to teach Brazil on the subject, adding that his country had reduced the deforestation of the Amazon rainforest by more than 50% in the last three years. This was something which should serve as a lesson to developed countries, which in his words, had already deforested everything under their control. Their deforestation allowed them to develop in the past.

"The wealthy countries are very smart, approving protocols, holding big speeches on the need to avoid deforestation but they already deforested everything." - Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva.

President Lula's words come at a time when countries in the South are taking strategic positions in the deforestation debate, which is tightly linked to the discussions on biofuels and on how to tackle global warming. Earlier we reported on Indonesia's Environment minister, who was equally sharp when he said that if the West wants to see the country's rainforests conserved, it should not talk about it, it should pay for it (earlier post). The minister's crude but effective logic was similar to Lula's: the West has razed down its own forests long ago, which has allowed it to develop, so it should not dictate others on which development strategy to follow, unless it is willing to compensate these countries for the economic opportunities they give up by protecting their forests.

However, even on this so-called 'compensated reduction' strategy (earlier post), Lula remained critical. "No country is revolutionizing its energy matrix as we are. The so-called carbon credits they invented - so far, we haven't seen a cent of that," he said in reference this strategy aimed at preserving carbon-absorbing forests:
biomass :: bioenergy :: biofuels :: energy :: sustainability :: rainforests :: Amazon :: deforestation :: compensated reduction :: development :: climate change :: Kyoto protocol :: Brazil ::

On the subject of alternative fuels, President Lula described Brazil as a world leader. And indeed the South American country is the world's largest producer of ethanol made from sugar cane and it has the world's largest fleet of cars that run on alternative fuels. The Brazilian president said he would be leading an international campaign to highlight the need for wealthy countries to reduce gas emissions, and to urge them to switch to non-fossil fuels, such as ethanol or biodiesel -- an area where Brazil is a pioneer.

A day before Lula's critical speech, China too blamed rich nations for greenhouse gases that fueled global warming and urged them to cut emissions. Lula's comments come a day after the UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon told a UN conference on the environment that the world's poor, who are the least responsible for global warming, will suffer the most from the effects of climate change.

Co-opting Lula
NGOs and environmentalists from the West now face a dilemma. On many issues, they have co-opted the left-leaning President who was re-elected last year in a landslide, as one of their heros who dares to stand up against the West. Lula is seen as the leader who forged a coalition of developing countries who successfully resisted trade agreements that would have been detrimental to the South (Doha), and who fights development paradigms that are too occidentalist. But now that Lula keeps being consequential, his message is turning somewhat against them. Even well-intentioned NGOs from the West, who think to be speaking in the name of people from the South, can never undo the fact that they are caught up in the same double standards Lula now rejects.

Developing countries are tired of the being told how to develop. And now that Brazil is becoming more powerful on the world stage, their message is finally being translated to a broader audience and taken more seriously. NGOs must now rethink their ideas on the environment and on 'empowerment' of the poor in the South; they must critically assess whether the concepts and strategies they use in debates on development are not too ethnocentric. Rainforests and biodiversity may well be a 'universal' goods, but the decision making processes and the politics surrounding their protection most definitely are not.