Lobbyists, Bartenders and First Ladies: Meet Brazil’s Monster Delegation

If you’re squeezing through the corridors of COP26 or eternally queuing in the rain to get in (“come prepared with appropriate gear”), odds are that you’ve heard a lot of Portuguese these days. In fact, Brazil has the biggest national delegation in Glasgow: a stunning 479 people. That’s roughly twice as much as the host country, the UK. ECO smelled stale açaí in that number, so we did some further digging into the list. What we have found was that many of those precious pink badges are dangling from very strange necks.

Among Brazilian “party” or “party overflow” delegates there are members of agribusiness lobby organizations (9), industry lobby organizations (6), business (25), spin doctors (8) hired to showcase “the real Brazil” (sic) in Glasgow, and even a bartender (which might actually explain why their positions on Article 6 sound so much like drunk talk).

And while young indigenous activist Txai Suruí, the only Brazilian voice in the Leaders’ Summit, had to search far and wide for an accreditation to attend the conference, the first ladies of four states and one major city were happily added to the delegation bandwagon. Brazil really likes its double counting: one for the husband, one for the wife.

Now, older ECO readers know that past COPs also had huge Brazilian pinkbadgery. That was due to the Foreign Office’s official policy of democratically accrediting whoever asked for it, from subnational governments to environmentalists, social movements, Indigenous representatives and the private sector. Ever since Jair Bolsonaro took office, that policy was scrapped. In Glasgow the government simply divided civil society in two: their friends from the rural and industry lobbies, who were warmly welcomed to the delegation (whisky, anyone?), and the folks Mr. Bolsonaro has famously called “a cancer I can’t kill” – enviros, Indigenous Peoples and youth – who aren’t allowed as much as a snack in their lavish pavilion in the Blue Zone.

As if exclusion and double standards weren’t enough, Bolsonaro’s Brazil has also bred a bizarre new kind of UN Constituency: the pink-badge bullies. Indigenous observers have been openly harassed in Glasgow by rural lobby representatives, who lumber (pun intended) around the corridors searching for “bad Brazilians” to call out.

At least this time around Bolsonaro doesn’t seem to have sent secret agents to spy on civil society like it did at COP25. Although ECO wouldn’t bet on this, given that Brazil’s mammoth delegation has a dozen people identified only by their names. Some of them may like their caipirinhas, shaken, not stirred.