Interest Groups in Brazilian Climate Policy: an Analysis of the Agricultural and Energy Sectors,

Abstract

Climate governance in Brazil is necessarily connected to the interests of three sectors: deforestation and land use change, agriculture, and energy, which, combined, represent around 90 percent of the country's emissions. While there is a significant number of studies on the first sector, few studies have looked into the bottlenecks of decarbonization in the agricultural and energy sectors. Thus, this article addresses some modulations in Brazilian climate politics and policy by analyzing the interest groups associated with low-carbon transitions in these two sectors. We particularly look into corporate and industrial interests and their dynamic relations with domestic and international policies, which so far have resulted in 'climate coordination gaps' that hinder deep decarbonization in these sectors. The results of the study detail actors, agendas, policies, interests, and challenges for a low-carbon transition in agriculture (family farming and agribusiness) and in the energy sector. The results corroborate the relevance of interest group analysis to understand the complexity of Brazil's domestic climate politics and policy, as well as the country's behavior in foreign policy arenas regarding climate change.