The thousands of candidates who will fight for a seat as councilors or mayors in the municipal elections that Brazil holds on Sunday, October 6, have had to campaign on the streets in the midst of heat waves until recently unlikely at this time of year and with unbreathable air due to forest fires. Still, in general, it seems that the climate crisis is not for them. Proposals regarding the environment barely have a place in the numerous debates and electoral programs, and when they do exist, they are generic and even ‘copy and paste’.
In the main capitals of Brazil, the percentage of residents who consider that climate change already poses “an immediate risk” for the population is around 60%. In Belo Horizonte, the most aware city, the percentage reaches 76%, according to a survey by Datafolha. The city is one of the most affected in Brazil by drought, and many neighborhoods already face water restrictions. However, its mayoral candidate with a more environmentalist program, deputy Duda Salabert, appears in fourth place in the polls, with hardly any options. It is something that is repeated in thousands of cities, where the growing concern of the population does not necessarily translate into votes for candidates with an agenda openly in defense of the environment.
“In Brazil we have enormous challenges. We have been fighting against extreme climate events for a long time, but public managers do not place them as a priority in their actions. And in these elections there is hardly any talk about that, we have not seen proposals,” Zuleica Goulart, coordinator of the Sustainable Cities Institute, laments by phone. Cities are responsible for 70% of the world’s greenhouse emissions and consume 78% of the world’s energy, according to UN Habitat data. But they can also be a source of solutions: waste management, increasing green areas or policies to reduce road traffic and adapt to flooding, for example, depend on mayors. These are debates that are barely heard in the electoral campaign.
A timid exception is the city of Porto Alegre. In May, historic rains flooded the State of Rio Grande do Sul, leaving 183 dead and tens of thousands displaced. In its capital, entire neighborhoods were under water for weeks. The proposals of the mayoral candidates deal above all with how to reinforce the city’s system of dams and hydraulic pumps to prevent the tragedy from happening again. Specialists welcome the ideas to adapt to a very uncertain future, but they miss measures in the other pillar of the climate strategy: mitigation; that is, the reduction of emissions. The current mayor, Sebastião Melo, supported by former president Jair Bolsonaro, was accused by his opponents of not investing enough in flood prevention in previous years. Polls place him as a favorite to renew his mandate.
In Brazil, the lists are open, so voters do not vote for a party; They directly choose their candidate for mayor and councilor, so they have to choose from hundreds of options, in most cases genuine strangers. There are some initiatives to guide voters towards candidates who are more sensitive to the future of the planet. The online platform Vote hair climate It works as a teaching tool that helps search for a candidate. The climate benchsupported by the Minister of the Environment Marina Silva, follows the same line and seeks to fill the city councils with allies against global warming (regardless of the political party). But at the end of September its database had fewer than 200 candidates. It is a drop in the ocean, taking into account that in these elections 463,000 are running throughout Brazil, including candidates for mayors, vice mayors and councilors. The Sustainable Cities Institute also promoted a letter for mayoral candidates to publicly commit to the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and the 2030 Agenda. At the moment it only has one signature, that of the PDT, a political party. center-left.
These and other similar initiatives of little success row against the current throughout Brazil, but the panorama is especially hostile in the most sensitive territories, such as the large rural fiefdoms or the Amazon, with realities very different from those of the urban centers of southern Brazil. , where historically the ecological discourse is a little more entrenched. In the jungle, the number of candidates linked to mining (mostly illegal) reaches 101, the highest in 14 years, according to data compiled by the newspaper Or Globe. In Novo Progresso, one of the epicenter cities of the garimpo (illegal mining). Its mayor, Gelson Dill, is seeking re-election knowing that the fines imposed on him years ago for deforesting land work in his favor: “Here, if someone comes saying ‘the mayor is a deforester’ it gives him votes. Did the environmental police give you a fine? You’re already winning votes,” he bluntly told the aforementioned newspaper.
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