Latin America

Lord Giddens Excerpts

Thursday 24th June 2010 Lords Chamber

[Lord Giddens]

My Lords, I join the queue of other noble Lords in congratulating the noble Viscount, Lord Montgomery, on instigating this debate and on all the work that he does to improve the relationship between the UK and Latin America. I especially congratulate my noble friend Lord Liddle on his wonderful maiden speech, demonstrating such intellectual power and coverage. He does not hang around, as he has only been formally inducted into your Lordships’ House for three days. Perhaps I may say, given his impetuous nature, “Why did you wait so long?”.

I have known and worked with my noble friend for many years and I can vouch for his collegiality and for the power of his intellect. He has enormous in-depth knowledge of British politics and of the European Union—qualities on display in his maiden speech—having served in the European Trade Commission and having been for some years adviser on the European Union to the former Prime Minister Tony Blair. He has also written widely in those areas. He will be a marvellous addition to your Lordships’ House, and I hope that your Lordships will join me in offering him a very warm welcome.

I shall talk about climate change policy in Latin America with especial reference to Brazil. Climate change poses massive threats to the Latin American subcontinent. To take one example, rapid tropical glacier retreat is observed in the Andes, with enormous implications for future water supply for the countries affected. Brazil is a front-line country for climate change. Even in the short term, it faces significant adverse changes in its ecosystems. As the right reverend Prelate rightly observed and discussed in a most interesting way, it is home to much of the Amazon basin, one of the world’s greatest natural resources, but one under threat should periods of prolonged drought become more common—and they seem to be becoming more common, especially given the big drought of about four years ago. Deforestation in the Amazon is a major source of humanly created carbon emissions.

Brazil is an extremely interesting country in terms of climate change policy. It has quite a different energy profile from most other countries—not only in the developing but in the developed world. Forty per cent of its energy, and twice that proportion of its electricity—more than 80 per cent—come from renewable sources. Virtually no other country in the world has a profile like that. It famously launched an ethanol programme in 1975 as a response to worries about energy security. More than half the cars in the country are flexi-fuel—they can run on 100 per cent ethanol or petrol, or a mixture of the two. The use of biomass for energy production, involving wood pulp and other sources, is highly advanced in Brazil. It therefore has a very interesting and almost unique energy profile.

President Lula introduced a comprehensive national climate change programme earlier this year. It was an ambitious set of policies. It marks the first time that a large developing country has set itself stringent carbon reduction targets, although they are voluntary rather than legally binding. The stated target is to cut emissions by between 36 per cent and 38 per cent by 2020, which propels the country right to the vanguard in world society. It is a target beyond that offered, for example, by the European Union. Crucially, Brazil’s mitigation activities will be quantifiable and verifiable, making them open to international scrutiny—something that the other large developing countries, India and China, have so far not put into practice.

Brazil therefore has the opportunity dramatically to influence international negotiations on carbon reduction. It was one of the five countries that made up the so-called BASIC group that created the Copenhagen accord following the conference in Copenhagen last December. The others were the United States, China, India and South Africa. The large developing countries are often seen as blocking effective international policy on the control of carbon emissions, but Brazil shows otherwise.

The success of the country in meeting its targets will depend significantly on how far it can effectively tackle land use and deforestation. These count for the large bulk of its greenhouse gas emissions. Brazil has a distinctly patchy record in this respect, but there are signs of progress. The country is involved in a number of bilateral relations with other states in which deforestation is a vital issue, such as in Indonesia. It has also signed up to a climate policy dialogue with the United States.

Hillary Clinton’s interesting speech in Quito earlier this month marked a significant shift in the United States’s policies towards Latin America. She spoke of creating what she called a community of the Americas. It is entirely appropriate that a climate change strategy should be a key part of this new approach, and in such a dialogue the US has at least as much to learn from Brazil as the other way around.