For more reporting from the Associated Press, see below.
Bolsonaro has reeled in such contentious rhetoric as he seeks to rehabilitate Brazil’s tattered environmental image abroad and project responsible stewardship. His critics have warned that his shift is disingenuous and that recent months of encouraging data that indicated less deforestation doesn’t necessarily represent a trend.
But the number of alerts in September was roughly flat year-on-year, and preliminary data for October shows it on track to far outpace the destruction of the same month last year.
Asked about the ongoing dispute over the double counting of carbon credits—in both the nation offsetting emissions and the nation buying the offsets—Mourão initially said the government is opposed, which would mark a change in the country’s stance. Nations in Glasgow will address potentially closing loopholes that allow for double counting; that would force countries like Brazil to decide if they count emissions reductions toward their own goals or the sale of reductions abroad to another country’s goals.
“Double counting, I have absolute certainty we don’t agree with that there,” he said. “We don’t support that under any hypothesis.”
Pressed further for clarification about whether the government was shifting its position, he said he wasn’t privy to the delegation’s negotiation strategy.
“It’s not up to me to unravel all the nuances of that strategy. You know, it is a negotiation, and it is being done with that ‘push and pull,’” Mourão said, adding that he hopes to reach consensus that yields “mutual benefits.”
Experts have accused Brazil of adjusting its emissions targets last year in a way that would allow it to release more greenhouse gas into the atmosphere, unlike most other nations, which have stepped up ambitions.
“Brazil has made a significantly worse proposal,” said Niklas Hoehne of the Berlin-based New Climate Institute. The government has proposed cutting emissions 43 percent by 2030 from the level 25 years earlier, but last year significantly increased the estimate for its baseline, making the target easier to accomplish.
