Brazil's greenhouse gas emissions were in 2021 its highest in 19 years, according to a report released on Tuesday (1) by the Climate Observatory. The record is catalyzed by energy, livestock and, mainly, record deforestation rates in the Amazon during the government of President Jair Bolsonaro — last year, the destruction of Brazilian biomes polluted the atmosphere more than the whole of Japan.

In 2021, Brazil emitted 2.42 billion gross tons of carbon dioxide (CO2), shows the document released five days from COP27, the UN climate conference, which this year takes place in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt. The volume represents about 4% of planetary emissions, behind only China, the USA, India and Russia.

Brazilian crude emissions in 2021 were 12.2% higher than in 2020, according to data compiled by the Greenhouse Gas Emissions Estimation System (SEEG) of the Climate Observatory, the main network of Brazilian civil society on the climate agenda, which brings together 77 organizations. Net emissions grew by 17%.

It is the fourth consecutive year that the number has increased, something unheard of since the historical series began in 1990. This year's growth is not only higher than in 2003, when the country saw its emissions grow unheard of by 20% due to increased deforestation in the Amazon.

"It's Brazil walking backwards, so we say this is a lost decade," Tasso Azevedo, seeg coordinator, told GLOBO. "It's like we're swimming against the current, without leaving the place.

The gross per capita emission of Brazilians is 11.4 tons of CO2, above the global average of 6.7 tons, but the numbers vary widely depending on the state, ranging from 2 to 94 tons — the overall goal is for the index to approach one ton of CO2 per inhabitant by 2050. The Brazilian number is similar to the Chinese, 9,000 tons, lower than that of the U.S., where the number reaches 18,000, and more than double the Indian number, 4,000.

The states that emit the most are Pará, due to changes in land use, followed by Mato Grosso, thanks to agriculture, São Paulo and Amazonas.

Emissions grew in all sectors except waste, but 49% of them came from changes in land use, that is, mainly deforestation. The country goes against the promises made at COP26 and confirmed to the UN in April this year: cut emissions by 37% by 2025 compared to 2005, and reduce them by half by the end of the decade. It is also far from zeroing out illegal desmate, as it said it would do in the next six years, even without making plans for it.

The goal, Azevedo said, is unambitious, and fulfilling it is "no seven-headed animal": to get there, it is necessary to control deforestation. The 18.5% annual increase in gross emissions generated by changes in land use, however, is also the largest in the last 19 years, shows the 10th edition of the report: the destruction of Brazilian biomes alone was responsible for releasing 1.19 billion gross tons of CO2 into the atmosphere in 2020.

Deforestation alone in the Amazon accounts for 77% of the pollution caused by the sector in the last year. In the first three years of bolsonaro government, the deforested area grew 73%, according to data from the Prodes system of the National Institute of Space Research (Inpe).

Post-election

The report also comes two days after the confirmation of the victory of Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, who made forceful signals to the Amazon in his first speech after the result. He said that "Brazil is ready to resume its role in the fight against the climate crisis, protecting all our biomes, especially the Amazon Forest."

Between 2004 and 2012, the PT governments reduced by 80% the deforestation in the region, and now Lula promises to "fight for zero deforestation", saying he is committed to indigenous peoples, monitoring the forest and combating mining, for example. The yaw has been well seen by the international community and should turn the transitional government into one of the stars of COP27.

" The desire is that none of this will succumb to the agendas negotiated with The Centrão. May it remain an agenda with the same degree of importance as other agendas as vital as the fight against hunger and economic recovery , azevedo said. "We have all the conditions to reverse this and get out of this ugly duckling position.

Other biomes also suffer, as the greenhouse gases emitted by the destruction of the Atlantic Forest and the Cerrado rose respectively by 65% and 4%. Desmate is not the only villain, as emissions from the industrial process sector and product uses grew by 8.2%. In the energy sector, the increase was 12.2%, the highest since 1973, the year of the so-called "economic miracle" of the military dictatorship — a scenario that follows the global trend in the post-pandemic economic recovery, after recording falls during the health crisis.

Energy and livestock

The energy sector emitted 435 million tonnes of CO2 in 2021, up from 387 million the previous year. The report also attributes the rise to two other factors: the fall in the sugarcane crop, which increased the price of ethanol, and the worst drought in nine decades in South Central Brazil in nine decades, which dried hydroelectric plants and required thermal power plants to be triggered.

"It's no use having more solar and wind power if you still need to turn on the thermal power plants when there is a lack of water," Azevedo said, noting that desmate in the Amazon reduces the capacity to generate water vapor in the South Central, greatly impacting the Pantanal, but also the rest of the country.

Agriculture also had the highest emissions of its historical series, after a growth of 3.8%: it was 601 million tons of CO2, against 579 million in 2020. The entire South Africa pollutes less than all the Brazilian agro — if it were a country, the sector would occupy the 16th place in the ranking of the most polluting nations.

The largest responsible for the record is livestock, which accounts for 79.4% of the sector's emissions, after cattle herd increased 3.1% in 2021, three times more than the average in the last 18 years, reaching a record 224 million heads. The burping of these animals, however, accounts for almost a third of all global emissions of methane, a gas that is up to 80 times more potent than CO2 in global warming over a 20-year period.

The increase is also in the light of another pact signed by Brazil last year, in which 103 nations pledged to cut methane emissions by 30 percent by 2030. In agriculture, the central problems are the use of nitrogen fertilizers and the volume of limestone in crops.