The Brazilian delegation has offered to help clear up some confusion about its Article 6 positions. The delegation has noted that some negotiators and observers of limited imagination have had difficulty understanding how a country with an economy-wide emissions reduction target in its NDC could also have emissions reductions “outside its NDC”.
The Brazilian Head of Delegation admits that the concept can’t be easily explained or understood. However, the delegation and certain parts of Brazil’s government and economy are totally committed to the concept, especially because of its usefulness in justifying exemptions from inconvenient “corresponding adjustments” or CAs. While some argue that CAs are necessary to avoid double counting of emissions reductions and to make sure carbon accounting corresponds to how much carbon humans emit to the atmosphere, Brazil would like us to believe that nothing could be further from the truth.
The Head of Delegation has been insisting that Brazil is ready to be flexible in reaching agreement on Article 6 at COP26. He notes that Brazil has already shown considerable flexibility, including conceptual flexibility that challenges traditional and outdated notions of emissions accounting that hold that there is nothing “out there” beyond economy-wide targets in terms of emissions and emissions reductions. The Brazilian delegation is optimistic that with a greater effort to communicate clearly, they can overcome the failures of its previous attempts to generate support for this admittedly difficult and mind-bending concept.
The delegation has thus enlisted the support of leading Brazilian climate change experts and spokespeople to help explain this concept.
President of a Brazilian pulp and paper company, Engineer.
“Every year we plant billions and billions of tender young eucalyptus seedlings, who suck millions of tonnes of CO2 from the atmosphere in their short lifetimes before being cut down and ground into fibers for paper, like what this ECO newsletter is printed on. What?! You are not allowed to distribute printed copies? That’s terrible!! But in any case, our trees are heroically saving the world from climate change and we can’t sell emissions credits to ensure our efforts are properly compensated. The government says that if we had to apply corresponding adjustments we would be allowing the private sector to profit while transferring responsibility for meeting Brazil’s targets to the government. I don’t see any problem with that. But I realise we need a plausible explanation for why profiting from carbon credits from BAU tree plantations at an industrial scale is good for Brazilians.
So here goes: As an engineer I had to study a lot of complex mathematics, including linear algebra that allowed for an infinity of dimensions, beyond the usual 3 or 4 that ordinary people are familiar with, and that Brazil’s emissions inventory is based on. So I would propose that the emissions reductions we want to claim outside Brazil’s NDC and inventory exist in those higher mathematical dimensions, which can be accurately measured and quantified even though we are not 100% sure they actually exist.
Member of Brazilian congressional farm and rancher lobby, Politician.
“It is entirely natural for politicians like me to imagine an accounting system that is supposed to include everything, but allows for a parallel accounting system outside of it. Every election, political candidates all around the world have to submit their reports on their campaign spending and swear that they are complete and exhaustive. But of course we have our parallel system of accounting, where we have sources of funding and expenses that aren’t recognised by the accounting systems imposed by governments and bureaucracies. What kind of an idiot would restrict themselves to only one system of accounting? Losers, that’s who! If Brazil wants to be a winner, we have to think outside the box, and beyond the emissions inventories imposed by the globalist UN rules.”