The BMZ budget for 2025 has been cut by one billion euros. You don’t need to be clairvoyant to predict that funding will stagnate or fall further in the coming years. However, fewer funds should not go hand in hand with a reduction in ambition, but rather a change in ambition. The field of action of agricultural and environmental policy in development cooperation with Brazil should be reconsidered.
Agricultural and environmental cooperation with Brazil after the 1992 Rio Conference
When the G7 countries launched the PPG7 tropical forest program in 1992, Germany had a major influence. From the outset, the majority of the funding came from the BMZ. Brazilian NGOs played an important role in the discussion, selection and implementation of approaches and projects. The PPG7 funds and the many other complementary and follow-up projects have certainly supported many good initiatives since then. These include millions of hectares of demarcated land for indigenous communities and protected areas. The indirect contribution to shaping environmental policy in Brazil itself has also been significant.
The Brazilian NGOs that were opinion leaders in the public environmental policy debate in the early 1990s were predominantly involved in the fight against the military dictatorship in Brazil, which had just been overcome. German official development cooperation (DC), as well as German NGOs and aid organizations, relied at the time on a strong perceived consensus between Germany and Brazil. After the environmental conference in Rio in 1992, German development cooperation often saw itself as a catalyst: NGOs were supported and these developed new practices to protect natural resources and promote peasant agriculture. These were then to be disseminated through advisory services or credit support in national or federal support measures. In Fundo Amazônia, experiences in the promotion of small-scale projects were processed and embedded in a funding model that used a lot of foreign and increasingly Brazilian money to help preserve biodiversity and support disadvantaged inhabitants of rural regions in their economic activities. German development cooperation played an important role in the development and implementation of these approaches and in setting up the Fundo Amazônia from the very beginning. After the major environmental conference in Rio in 1992 and especially when Lula took office in 2003 and the Environment Minister Marina da Silva appeared on behalf of Brazil at international environmental conferences, there was a long period of optimism. That is now over.
Brazilian society is different. In the midst of extreme overall political polarization, NGOs are breaking new ground. Brazil is now a self-confident global player and is not only willing but also able to channel billions of euros of private and public funds into the sustainable development of the Amazon and other regions. The question, however, is what kind of sustainable development is being pursued.
The formation of civil society opinion on environmental policy and the Amazon has changed since 2015 at the latest. The NGOs that were active 30 years ago are still present, but some are still focusing on frontal opposition to the agricultural sector, agricultural trade and the EU’s agreement with MERCOSUR. In the meantime, however, the Brazilian agri-food sector has differentiated itself in practical and conceptual terms and modernized both technically and environmentally. There are now new formats and groups for active dialog between the agri-food industry and Brazilian society: The “Coalizão Brasil”, founded in 2015, is particularly competent and politically representative, a remarkable alliance of over 400 environmental NGOs, companies, scientific institutes, agricultural associations and banks, even by international standards. Renowned environmental NGOs in particular, such as IMAFLORA, IPAM and IMAZON, have moved away from the old polarized positioning between THE agricultural sector and THE environmental NGOs and sought dialogue with that part of the agricultural and food sector that was also prepared to give up maximum positions in favour of a realpolitik dialogue. Coalizão Brasil has set itself the goal of directly influencing socio-political discourse and environmental policy practice. This has resulted in an alliance for modern forest and environmental protection, sustainable agriculture and the fight against illegal deforestation. It thus stands against that part of the traditional and often reactionary agricultural sector that forms the basis of Bolsonarismo. With conceptual energy and political creativity, Coalizão Brasil today influences all relevant agricultural and environmental issues – without the fundamental opposition of the old guard. Today, Coalizão Brasil is the most influential group of actors in civil society and the private sector. This is where strategic concepts on agricultural and environmental policy are developed, often controversially debated, and where compromise lines are prepared at national level. This is achieved with technical expertise, but also with the help of intelligent forms of internal political negotiation that not only know consensus and voting, but also distinguish between non-approval and veto. Member organizations of Coalizão Brasil avoid the hard veto: a new style has arrived and another generation has taken over – at a time when socio-political polarization was becoming increasingly violent and damaging democratic institutions.¹
New paths for environmental development cooperation in Brazil
During the years of the Bolsonaro government, German development cooperation was unable to take any major steps; it was a great technical and political achievement for KfW and GIZ to remain active in the country on behalf of BMZ, to find alternative ways, e.g. to work more closely with the federal states. Cooperation with the Ministry of the Environment was made completely impossible by a minister who publicly supported the criminal trade in tropical timber from illegal deforestation. Cooperation with the surprisingly pragmatic and technically competent Ministry of Agriculture, on the other hand, proved to be productive even during Bolsonaro’s government. How can German development cooperation position itself with a new Brazil that is involved in the BRICS and is geopolitically self-confident and pragmatic in an increasingly multipolar world, while at the same time maintaining a distance from China, a Brazil that remains open to all sides and is intensively committed to concluding the trade agreement with the EU? Where does an equally self-confident German development cooperation see technical and political priorities with this “new” Brazil? One thing is clear: the preservation of global goods such as biodiversity and in particular the reduction of greenhouse gases must remain a priority. Impact monitoring and rigorous evaluation in cooperation with the scientific community must play a greater role. Where funds are becoming scarcer, they must not be fragmented and fragmented, but must be used in a more focused and strategic way – in coordination with our partner Brazil. There must be greater monitoring of the impact that the German contribution can achieve. An ongoing Brazilian agricultural or environmental program should then be financed more from Brazilian tax revenues.
Five aspects are highlighted for the agricultural and environmental sector.
- Sustainability in tropical agriculture: The Brazilian agricultural and food sector has long been an enemy, even among some German NGOs. The expansion of agriculture was held responsible for the deforestation of tropical forests and the destruction of indigenous habitats. However, the agricultural sector has changed; the wheat is being separated from the chaff and the old “agricultural extractivism” is increasingly becoming a thing of the past. Today, new farmland is less and less the result of the destruction of native vegetation. Instead, farmers are turning to the gigantic reserves of land that were deforested a long time ago, especially degraded pastureland. Existing areas, particularly in the Cerrado, are being used more intensively, which reduces the agriculturally motivated deforestation pressure; there are no longer just five cattle per 10 hectares, but 10, or 20 or more. And the soy yield per hectare has risen from 2,500 to 3,500 kg in 20 years. It is this intensification that is helping to protect the remaining native vegetation. From a social point of view, the enormous concentration of agricultural land ownership continues to be highly problematic. However, there have only been a few historical windows in the last 70 years to implement comprehensive agrarian reform. However, there has never been a social or political majority for this. This is unlikely to change in the foreseeable future. In any case, this is a politically sensitive intra-Brazilian issue. Irrespective of this, it would be positive from a climate and environmental policy – and therefore global – perspective if degraded pastureland were to be restored on a large scale, if agriculture were to increasingly use soil conservation practices and more carbon were to be fixed through more intensive use, if modern bio-inputs were to be used, if modern bio-inputs are used that can reduce the use of pesticides, if atmospheric nitrogen is bound via soil bacteria and thus the most important plant nutrient is provided in an energy-saving and natural way, and if animal husbandry, forestry and plant production are integrated on existing arable and pasture land. All these measures potentially affect many millions of hectares. For reasons of soil ecology and climate policy, as well as to reduce deforestation pressure, such more intensive land use is necessary in tropical and sub-tropical agriculture than has previously been recognized in Western Europe. The concept and practical model here is “sustainable intensification”.
- Deforestation dynamics and how to combat them: Deforestation is still the biggest contributor to greenhouse gas emissions in Brazil. However, it is necessary to differentiate better than before between the motives for deforestation. In the Amazon, illegal deforestation is closely linked to organized crime. Deforestation here takes place predominantly on public land and is used for land theft and other illegal activities and not primarily for agriculture. This is where the Brazilian police and judiciary come into play. However, where deforestation is legal under Brazilian law in the Amazon and even more so in the Cerrado, positive economic incentives are needed to stop deforestation. This is why the legislative package on payment for environmental services, which will be completed in mid-2025, is an ideal conceptual policy framework for German development cooperation. It could help to establish this instrument as an incentive for the preservation of native vegetation on a broad scale.
- The Amazon’s poverty is urban: almost 80% of the Amazon’s population is urban, and poverty is also predominantly urban. Small-scale approaches to promoting rural development and conservation measures remain necessary. However, investments in economic and social infrastructure in the cities promise to have a greater impact on forest protection because, alongside the social cash transfers of the Bolsa-Família, they are best placed to combat urban poverty and thus raise wage levels across the board. Rural and urban incomes are like communicating pipes. And it is absolute poverty that makes it easier for organized crime to recruit cheap labour for illegal logging. Small-scale rural development measures including the sustainable use of non-timber products such as Brazil nuts, rubber or açaí or other forms of traditional economic activity will not (alone) be able to mobilize massive public and private investment. However, these are necessary to stimulate more dynamic economic development in the region, which uses better technologies and thus enables more value creation and higher incomes across the board. This is precisely what should happen in the cities first and foremost, not least in order to remove the ground from the illegal deforestation economy from this side as well. Is this an opportunity for German technical and financial cooperation? Roads, ports, water and sewage construction, education and training, expansion of intelligent power grids?
- Partner environment and strategy development: German development cooperation is not an environmental policy corrective of the Brazilian government or does not support a specific political faction, but cooperates with the government’s environmental policy leadership – if and as long as such cooperation is possible and desirable from a German perspective. Dialogue with Coalizão Brasil is an authoritative civil society reference for technical and strategic considerations, sustainable practices and agricultural and environmental policy. The strategic goal must be to establish the environmentally progressive part of the agricultural sector as a central interlocutor in its alliance with science and civil society and to strengthen it vis-à-vis the reactionary, anti-democratic faction.
- Contribution of German development cooperation in a global context: The EU’s trade agreement with MERCOSUR was signed in December 2024. The current geopolitical upheaval is urging us to ratify it quickly. The newly negotiated sustainability chapter emphasizes the Paris Climate Agreement as essential and commits to zero deforestation from 2030. To compensate for unilateral trade restrictions introduced after 2019, trade and technical cooperation benefits are now provided for when certain products (including agricultural products) are particularly relevant for sustainability and the climate. Brazil embarked on its very own path of agricultural development a long time ago and, with its tropical agriculture, faces different climatic challenges to sustainability than Western Europe. This must be respected. Brazil is an important and independent player in the multipolar world. With this in mind, German development cooperation should play a proactive, far-sighted and responsible role in the implementation of the sustainability chapter of the trade agreement with MERCOSUR.
¹ The elected president Dilma Roussef was deposed in 2016 and Lula was imprisoned for 580 days on flimsy grounds. His candidacy for the 2018 presidential election was thus prevented and Bolsonaro won the election.
Cover picture: Photo by Wenderson Araujo; Sistema CNA/Senar
