ABSTRACT
This chapter illustrates the challenges which Brazil has repeatedly encountered in reconciling economic development with environmental sustainability. For much of its history, Brazil lacked a systematic, properly enforced policy framework to help balance the competing interests of economic progress and environmental protection. The result was environmental depredation on a huge scale; from the 1970s onwards growing environmental awareness helped prompt the development of a more robust legislative, institutional and enforcement framework. Progress here reached its apogee in the 2000s and 2010s. This period saw broadly successful initiatives aimed at countering deforestation, loss in biodiversity and rising carbon dioxide emissions. More recently, the picture has darkened. Rates of deforestation have climbed while available evidence suggests that carbon dioxide emissions have risen in tandem. At the same time, partly thanks to the boom in hydrocarbons exploration and production, a limit may have been reached with respect to the participation of renewables in the overall energy mix. Does the future hold out any prospect of a return to a greater emphasis on environmental sustainability? The answer rests largely on political developments. These relate to the domestic sphere and also to the weight of international pressure that might be brought to bear on the current and future administrations.
