For the environmentalist, who participates in this edition of the Entre no Clima podcast, it is necessary to encourage a spirit of cooperation and partnership in society so that there are more agents of change
Any country that is thinking about achieving carbon neutrality – which means seeking a balance between emissions and carbon absorption by natural systems, making the balance in the atmosphere literally neutral – it is important to first “decarbonize” rather than maximum the entire economic chain. This involves permanently reducing the greatest possible volume of emissions, reducing energy use, replacing fossil fuels with renewable sources, traveling less and eliminating waste of all kinds.
Negative carbon is still one step ahead: if a nation removes more CO2 emissions than it disperses, offsetting more than the total amount emitted, it is not only neutralizing emissions, but making them negative. Does it seem like a distant dream for a country of continental dimensions – and still as marked by carelessness with nature – as Brazil? Not for Guilherme Syrkis, director of the Centro Brasil no Clima (CBC).
“We have a very strong focus on promoting the decarbonization policy. The CBC dreams of Brazil arriving in 2045 as carbon negative: as a country that emits less and can export a lot of credit to the whole world”, he says in an interview with Entre no Clima, the Um Só Planeta podcast. According to him, this is a dream that can be realized in the coming decades.
The CBC, founded in 2015 under the leadership of his father, Alfredo Sirkis, who died in 2020, has been working intensively as a think-and-do tank in the production of knowledge on climate change and in the influence on policies. that can provide adaptation and mitigation, in addition to having a positive impact on the populations most affected by the climate crisis.
The director explains that the CBC acts to influence Brazilian politics and power structures in a strictly non-partisan way. It develops proposals, projects, strategies and actions, especially through articulation and political advocacy at the subnational level and dialogue at the international level, in order to facilitate the transition to a neutral carbon economy, through the full implementation of the Paris Agreement and, more specifically, of the Brazilian Nationally Determined Contribution (NDC).
In its history, it has helped to establish sectoral and regional NDC goals, increasing its ambitions, building a long-term strategy with the objective of net zero greenhouse gas emissions by the middle of the 21st century and designing robust adaptation actions in different levels. The CBC thus acts as an institution to support ambitious environmental goals for the country, helping Brazil to regain a prominent position in the global scenario of effectively combating climate change.
For Syrkis, it is necessary, in the current scenario, to combine reflection and action, theory and practice – which can be done from the evaluation, analysis of data and relevant information, articulation between multiple stakeholders and dialogue in the different national and international spheres of strategic way, involving the whole of society.
“We always need to have that spirit of cooperation, of partnership. There are a lot of people doing great work in this area. And we always have to be thinking about how we can leverage together, and actually be agents of change, and visible change”, defends the environmentalist.
