Lat Am climate change at the U.N. (Sept. 25, 2019)

Climate has been on the world stage this week, with the United Nations Climate Action Summit on Monday, and a sobering new U.N. report on the massive impact climate change is already having on the world's oceans and frozen regions. Within the region there are divergent visions, to put it lightly.

The U.N. Conference on Climate Change (COP25) will be held in Chile this December, amid a growing realization that voluntary emissions reductions won't be enough. In Latin America, only Costa Rica, Chile and Uruguay have pledged carbon neutrality, with the Uruguayans holding the most ambitious target for 2030. In the case of the U.S., advocates should focus on persuading leaders about the immediate impact of on the administration’s national security and migration agenda, writes Anders Beal in Americas Quarterly. Increasingly environmental change is affecting migration patterns in Central America, recent figures from the Global Index for Peace estimate that Latin America will experience an increase of 17 million migrants by 2050 due to the effects of climate change.

Not that the Trump administration seems very amenable to this line of argument. NBC reports that the Trump administration has ignored its own research demonstrating the link between climate change and migration. (See yesterday's briefs.)

Venezuela

Environmental concerns are not often cited in analysis of Venezuela's crisis -- but management of natural resources, including gold, is key to Venezuela's stability writes Bram Ebus at Venezuelan Politics and Human Rights.

Brazil

Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro dedicated his General Assembly inaugural speech yesterday to rejecting data about increasing rainforest devastation under his watch. “Our Amazon is larger than the whole of western Europe and remains virtually untouched – proof that we are one of the countries that most protects the environment,” Bolsonaro claimed in a combative 30 minute speech. 

The problem is not the environment, but sovereignty, according to Bolsonaro.  He argued that the Amazon must be opened up for economic development, and that foreign NGOs and governments who opposed that view did so because they themselves had their eyes on the mineral wealth and biodiversity within Brazil’s indigenous reserves, reports the Guardian. He said Brazil will use the Amazon's riches as it sees fit. (See also Washington Post, Huffington Post and Reuters.) 

Aos Fatos fact checked Bolsonaro's claims on the environment -- many of which turned out to be false or misleading.

Ahead of the speech indigenous leaders in Brazil have denounced Jair Bolsonaro’s “colonialist and ethnocidal” policies. (Guardian)

The Amazon is hardly likely to leave the international limelight, however. The Vatican's Synod for the Amazon, a three week conclave starting Oct. 6, will pit Bolsonaro's vision against that of Pope Francis, reports the Guardian.

News Briefs

More Brazil

• Brazil's current democratic crisis began in 2013, and "only its ample civil society, if mobilized, can rescue it," argues Luiz Carlos Bresser-Pereira at the AULA blog.

• "For normalcy to return to Brazil and for hope to be recovered, Lula's freedom—along with annulment of the faulty process by which he was condemned—is essential," writes Celso Amorim in Common Dreams.

Venezuela

• Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro is aware of Colombian guerrilla camp locations in Venezuela, according to former intelligence chief Gen. Manuel Ricardo Cristopher Figuera. Figuera, who is now in the U.S., told the Washington Post that he personally handed details of the location of a guerrilla camp and the rough locations and activities of Colombian drug cartels and criminal gangs operating on Venezuelan soil to the Venezuelan leader last year.

• Russian President Vladimir Putin backed negotiations between Venezuela’s government and minority opposition groups in dissent from Juan Guaidó's leadership. (Reuters)

Mexico

• Mexicans say corruption is falling even as a third of them also report paying a bribe, according to a survey by Transparency International. (Reuters)

• Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador promised to gradually increase minimum wage, reports Bloomberg.

Colombia

• Eleven former FARC fighters acknowledged kidnappings and asked for forgiveness in the first joint, written testimony to the Colombian special jurisdiction for peace. (Associated Press)

Haiti

• Reuters photographer Andres Martinez Casares told BBC how he captured the image of Haitian Senator Jean-Marie Ralph Féthière opening fire outside the country's parliament on Monday. (See Monday's briefs.)

El Salvador

• Media investigations linking Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele to payments from a company linked to a subsidiary of Venezuela’s state-owned oil company, PdVSA, have rung alarm bells about potential corruption in the country's new government, reports InSight Crime. (See last Wednesday's post.)

• Salvadoran trans activist Bianka Rodriguez is the regional winner for the Americas of the 2019 Nansen Refugee Award from the United Nations Refugee Agency (UNHCR). (EFE)

Argentina

• Argentine President Mauricio Macri met with the IMF in New York yesterday, but there's no word on when the fund will advance with the next $5 billion tranche of funds that was expected for this month, reports Reuters.

Did I miss something, get something wrong, or do you have a different take? Let me know ...

Latin America Daily Briefing