Brazilian climate policy since 2005: continuity, change and prospective. CEPS Working Document No. 373, February 2013

In the five-year period 2005-09, Brazil has dramatically reduced carbon emissions by around 25% and at the same time has kept a stable economic growth rate of 3.5% annually. This combination of economic growth and emissions reduction is unique in the world. The driver was a dramatic reduction in deforestation in the Amazonian forest and the Cerrado Savannah. This shift empowered the sustainability social forces in Brazil to the point that the national Congress passed (December 2009) a very progressive law internalising carbon constraints and promoting the transition to a low-carbon economy. The transformation in Brazil’s carbon emissions profile and climate policy has increased the potentialities of convergence between the European Union and Brazil. The first part of this paper examines the assumption on which this paper is based, mainly that the trajectory of carbon emissions and climate/energy policies of the G20 powers is much more important than the United Nations multilateral negotiations for assessing the possibility of global transition to a low-carbon economy. The second part analyses Brazil’s position in the global carbon cycle and public policies since 2005, including the progressive shift in 2009 and the contradictory dynamic in 2010-12. The final part analyses the potential for a transition to a low-carbon economy in Brazil and the impact in global climate governance.

Corporate social responsibility: a European perspective. Jean Monnet/Robert Schuman Paper Series Vol. 13 No. 6, June 2013

From the Introduction. CSR grows at different rhythms. CSR varies from continent to continent, country from country, sector from sector and corporation from corporation. The Responsible Competitive Index (RCI) from the UK NGO Accountability and the Brazilian Business School, Fundaçao Dom Cabral, looks at how countries are performing in their efforts to promote responsible business practices and issues periodical indexes about such performances. The RCI’s index for 2007 analysed 108 countries (96% of global GDP). The analysis showed that more advanced economies do better in this area. The top 20 countries, by the ranking order of best performance, were the following: 1 Sweden, 2 Denmark, 3 Finland, 4 Iceland, 5 UK, 6 Norway, 7 New Zealand, 8 Ireland, 9 Australia, 10 Canada, 11 Germany, 12, Netherlands, 13 Switzerland, 14 Belgium, 15 Singapore, 16 Austria, 17 France, 18 USA, 19 Japan, and 20 Hong Kong, etc. However, it is important to bear in mind that advanced economies have often moved their more dirty industries to other parts of the world where there are less stringent environmental and social standards. As a result, other countries may be polluting on their behalf, and the indexes do not factor those in.2