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These days it is being celebrated in the capital of the Amazon, Belém (Brazil), the COP30 –Conference of the Parties, for its acronym in English–, the meeting of the signatory countries of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). A key conference to, supposedly, make political decisions at the international level in order to combat climate change or reduce its effects. A COP that acquires a special symbolic weight by being held in the Amazon, in a context characterized both by the worsening effects of the ecological crisis and by the growing climate denialism championed by Donald Trump from the White House.
In fact, Brazil is using the macro climate event to try to position itself as the champion of green capitalism. A movement that has a lot of internal political dispute, such as antagonism to the denialism of the Bolsonaro extreme right one year before the presidential elections, while positioning Brazil as a regional and international actor of the green agenda, even more so after the European Union (EU) is abandoning the makeup of the Green Pact to instead embrace a more khaki, military, Rearm Europe.
An event that also shows the limits and contradictions of the Brazilian green discourse to lead the global environmental agenda while increasing oil production, expanding the frontier of fossil fuels and increasing agribusiness, which exacerbates the climate crisis and its extreme weather phenomena. In fact, a month before the climate summit, Petrobras, the Brazilian public oil company, obtained the license to drill in the basin at the mouth of the Amazon. An exploitation that will make Brazil the fourth largest oil producer in the world, only behind the United States, Saudi Arabia and Russia.
In this sense, Brazil has repeatedly avoided recognizing the role of agribusiness in deforestation, the country’s main contribution to greenhouse gas emissions. A reality that, once again, collides with the veneer of green capitalism that the country wants to sell at this summit, with its flagship measure of the Tropical Forests Forever Fund (TFFF). A public-private initiative that aims to create a fund of 125 billion dollars (25 thousand as a contribution from the States and 100 thousand from multinationals), administered by the World Bank to invest in financial markets, distributing its annual profitability – estimated at about 4 billion – among the countries that preserve their forests. The Minister of Finance himself, Fernando Haddad, stated that the fund is “Brazil’s main initiative” at the COP.
Promote a Fund for Tropical Forests while, a few weeks later, the EU-Mercosur trade agreement – popularly known as a “cows for cars” agreement – is planned to be signed. An agreement where the EU intends to improve access to the Mercosur market for its multinational automobiles, automotive accessories, energy companies, beverages and financial services, while the Mercosur countries will gain more access to the European market for their raw materials, beef and chicken, soy, sugar and ethanol for biofuels, among others. A trade agreement that will not only institutionalize an asymmetric and neocolonial trade relationship, but, as various reports warn, will favor deforestation in the Mercosur countries. In fact, livestock farming is one of the biggest risks to the Amazon forests; 63 percent of deforested areas are occupied by grasslands.
Despite this, the EU-Mercosur Agreement is presented as an example of a commercial relationship that respects the environment and human rights, all thanks to the discursive make-up of the soft power European, included in the famous safeguard clauses. Mechanisms that appear with voluntary formulations (“should”, “will make an effort”) and without effective binding mechanisms, which in practice subject good words about the climate or labor rights to the binding commercial obligations included in the agreement.
But, in the face of Trumpist brutalism, typical of a New York real estate thug, treating Latin America as the backyard of his “Make America Great Again”, in a re-updating of the imperialist policy of the Great Club of Roosevelt, the EU-Mercosur Agreement and its green rhetoric may even appear presentable, as the least bad option in an increasingly uncertain international context.
In fact, the COP in Belém will be the first since Donald Trump returned to the White House. In an unequivocal declaration of intent, the United States not only has not participated in the leaders’ summit, but has also not sent high-level representatives to the technical negotiations in Belém. Thus, it shows its most absolute contempt for multilateral spaces, also reaffirming the banner of climate denialism as a defining feature of the global reactionary wave. In fact, the Argentine president, Javier Milei, the most prominent figure of the reactionary international on the Latin American continent, has followed Trump’s example and has not attended the COP in Belém either.
A far-right brutalism and denialism that is functional to the evil minorism of green capitalism. A concave mirror in which to enlarge the image of the speculative fund for tropical forests, not be very critical of oil prospecting in the Amazon or even defend the trade agreement between the EU and Mercosur as the least bad option. A way to narrow the space of what is possible for climate mitigation policies, social justice or commercial alternatives to neocolonial agreements with a “human face.” A way to make the impossible “green capitalism” more presentable.
*Author of the book Trumpismos. Neoliberals and authoritarians. X-ray of the radical right
