Rio+20 na Política (Externa) Brasileira

When environmental issues entered the United Nations´ agenda, with Stockholm conference (1972), Brazil lived under a military dictatorship that considered ecological themes as rich countries´ hypocrisy, supposedly afraid of fast Brazilian economic growth or interested in the exploitation of the natural resources of the Amazon. These views changed with the return of democracy and the beginning of dynamic social movements dedicated to the environment and big transformations in public policy. However, Rio+20 will be held among serious controversy in Brazil over development and sustainability.

The new environmental conscience was symbolized with the mobilization around the tragedy of Cubatão, the city in São Paulo´s industrial belt that was for many years the most polluted in the world, with severe consequences to the health of its inhabitants. The admiration achieved by the labor leader of Amazon´s rubber extractors, Chico Mendes, was also representative of the new mood, even if it was not enough to prevent his murder by powerful landowners.

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Brazilian foreign policy has ambitious goals to promote the image of the country as a rising power. Since the 1990s, this idea includes an active role in environmental debates and Brazil see itself as a honest broker between rich and poor nations, solving conflicts and framing complex deals such as the agreements of Rio 92 and the Durban conference on climate change. Nevertheless, we may argue that Brazilian environmental policy is more progressive in its foreign face than in its domestic one.

O resto, no artigo que escrevi para o site "La Parole des Jeunes à Rio+20".