The role of unstated mistrust and disparities in scientific capacity : Examples from Brazil

Abstract

The objective of this report is to illuminate the complex ways in which science is produced, used or otherwise of importance to Brazilian climate policies and politics and how it is interlinked with culture, power and politics, including the large number of factors that variously constrain or facilitate climate-related policy. It discusses arguments and evidence ofhow geopolitics, socio-cultural and political perspectives, and trust or lack thereof, shape – orare perceived to shape various lines of knowledge production, contestation and mobilization related to climate change and the negotiations under the United Nations FrameworkConvention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). It argues for the need to understand the existence and consequences of distrust between the global North and South (i.e., industrialized countries and the developing countries) in climate related affairs, including the causes ofmistrust and, in particular, connections between distrust and disparities in both power andnational capacities to produce and frame the knowledge used in climate negotiations.Many developing countries lack the knowledge and support offered by social and economic infrastructure, scientific and technological capability when facing international negotiation onclimate change, and there are indications that this – in addition to equity and participationconcerns – troubles leaders of such countries and affects general receptivity to agendas, processes and reports associated with the IPCC, the UNFCCC and associated institutions suchas the Global Environmental Facility (GEF) under the direction of the World Bank. The reportpoints out that it is necessary to investigate the role of such concerns on the part of Brazilianpolitical leaders involved in the climate negotiations. An important contribution lies in the mere fact of documenting climate-related knowledge, processes and politics in Brazil. By contrast to richer nations in the world, and perhaps alsosome less developed countries (LDCs), there is an astonishing small amount of actualdocuments produced by the Brazilian government about Brazil's climate science capacity,knowledge gaps, and policies. The reasons for this need to be understood in terms of technicalas well as socio-cultural and political factors, as scarcity of studies and communicationconcerning such things as impact and vulnerability studies limits the mobilization of civilsociety on the issue of climate change, an important stimulus of social change and policy inLatin America.