Proceedings World Bioenergy 2010

of the best (if not the best) way to inform and enlist the
communities into a project, are the mass media.
2 CLIMATE CHANGE IN BRAZIL: PUBLIC
POLICIES, POLITICAL AGENDA AND MEDIA
In the face of global climate change and its
repercussions in the energy, construction, industry,
agriculture, commerce and industries specialized in the
carbon market, the environmental issue makes entrance
to the stage, especially in the election campaign for the
Presidency in 2010.
In discussion agenda of the parties, three key points
are: sanitation, violence and ethics in politics.
During the current government, according to surveys
by the National Institute for Space Research - INPE,
deforestation in the Amazon region was approximately
80,000 km² between the years 2004 and 2008. Also, the
government granted an environmental license for the
transposition of the São Francisco River and large dams
in the Amazon.
About the media coverage about climate change, we
can highlight researches conducted by ANDI (News
Agency for Childhood Rights) [3] in partnership with the
British Embassy and British Council in Brazil, on the last
12 years as pointing to relevant aspects:
• Migration of a highly internationalized
coverage to a more regional context and
local aspects, establishing links between a
so broad phenomena and the daily life of
the public that access the information
offered by the news vehicles;
• In a first moment, the coverage of the
theme was based by the perception that the
responsibility for presenting solutions for
the climate change issue was at the hands
of foreign governments and these solutions
could be reached through partnerships and
agreements between nations (as in the case
of the agreements for emissions reduction)
(24%); more recently (2007/2008) the
research pointed that this responsibility was
transferred to the national government,
especially the Brazilian executive power
(32,2%).
• There is an increase in the mention of the
adaptation need allied with mitigation, due
to the acceleration and escalation of the
impacts caused by the climate change;
• Is clearly seen a valorization of the debate
around the necessity of public policies that
reduce directly the volume of greenhouse
gases in the atmosphere;
• However, the weather unbalances keeps
been approached as an issue exclusively
environmental by a significant part of the
Brazilian media.
Below, is a table of mitigation strategies by area of
incidence presented by the media in two periods:
Table I: Mitigation strategies by incidence areas
(% of total news relating to climate change that mention
forms of mitigation - 45.9% in 2005/2007 and 51.1% in
2007/2008)
Incidence Areas 2005/2007 2007/2008
Forests and soil use 26,4% 25,4%
Energy offers 45,0% 20,8%
Industry 6,8% 10,0%
Carbon Credits Sales 0,0% 9,8%
Transportation 7,5% 9,2%
Waste 6,4% 4,9%
Agriculture 4,1% 3,0%
Others 3,8% 16,9%
Total 100,0% 100,0%
Climate Change in Brazilian Press (page 56 - Table 32)
It is worth noting that the increase in the reference to
"other" options, is due to the increased attention devoted
mainly to focus on different processes of public
awareness towards a more conscious consumption of
nonrenewable resources, besides the neutralization of
carbon through the planting of trees.
It is not possible to think about solutions dissociated
of the contexts of public policies, economic development
models and consumption and behavior patterns of the
contemporary societies.
3 ENVIRONMENT AND LANDSCAPE: CONFLICTS
AND ADVANCES
The conflicts that sometimes impose itself on the
relationship between public policies, natural resources
depletion and landscape changes in different Brazilian
ecosystems, points out the discussion of development and
sustainability, since often, the eco-capitalism is
incompatible with the solution of ecological problems
due to their own internal rationality of the economic
system based on capital accumulation.
The predictability of negative impacts of capitalist
production in nature dynamics is fragile, since it does not
consider the local and regional geodynamic processes
character.
For that, one should consider and identify a set of
geo-environmental units that configure large territorial
compartments in which the external geodynamic
processes behave similarly and can be triggered,
accelerated or even intensified by different socioeconomic
activities such as internal urbanization process,
agriculture, mining, energy matrix exploration, infrastructure
works varying magnitude according to the way
which each intervention in the environment is produced.
In this sense, the concept of risk is evidenced by the
vision of sustainability, where restrictions on the
indiscriminate use of natural resources should be defined
by their ability to support and renewal.
Risk analysis, according to Egler (1996) [4] has the
challenge of working within the limits of behavior
predictability of complex systems and, in most cases,
potentially hazardous to life.
The levels of environmental risks seem to be arising
from three categories: natural, technological and social
risks.
4 SÃO PAULO STATE AND CLIMATE CHANGE
INITIATIVES
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