Outside the tent ...

The man who until May last year was Brazil's most senior environmental official has accused President Lula of lacking strategic vision on the environment.

João Paulo Capobianco left his post as executive secretary at the Ministry of the Environment (MMA) at the same time as the resignation of the charismatic environment minister Marina Silva, the former rubber-tapper's leader who had been appointed to the post by Lula when he first took office in 2002.

Capobianco, now visiting professor at Columbia University, used an interview with the leading newspaper Estado de São Paulo to criticise not just the president, but also the current environment minister Carlos Minc, accusing him of being "excessively personalist" in his administration.

As the official responsible for co-ordinating Brazil's environmental policy for six years, Capobianco was frank about its failures, especially on the question of deforestation in the Amazon. "I think we really failed to construct a more productive relationship with the economic sector - agriculture, trade, infrastructure, energy, etc," he told Estado.

"The environmental agenda cannot be the monopoly of one or other ministry - it needs to part of a vision of the State, and this vision does not exist. Is Lula sensitive to the environmental issue? Sure he is. But he does not have a strategic vision on the subject, he does not even consider it a strategic question."

Such comments are perhaps not surprising from a man who lived through constant battles with other government ministries over questions such as the licensing of hydro-electric dams, legalisation of genetically-modified soya and the special pleading of the powerful rural lobby in the Brazilian Congress. He is, after all, now "outside the tent" and free to voice the frustrations which, frankly, are felt in just about every environment ministry on the planet.

What is more unusual about the Brazilian system is that even those still inside the tent can at times be refreshingly frank about the internal struggles they face. This was Carlos Minc himself, speaking just before Christmas at a seminar on deforestation figures and quoted by the government news service Radiobras: "One ministry goes and opens up a road, another goes and builds a hydro-electric dam, and another expands the agricultural frontier. Then deforestation goes up and I'm the one who has to explain it."

Minc's undoubted dynamism and his willingness to fight the corner for the environment do not bring him much praise from Capobianco, however. In the Estado interview, he describes Minc as a friend with unquestioned commitment to the environmental agenda, but adds, "He is conducting an excessively and dangerously personalist administration. He wants in every way and at all times to give the impression that he's being a good minister and leading a good administration. This is really bad, because in truth the environmental issue is a complex one which inescapably involves conflicts."

Capobianco cites as an example the recent government decision to allow the state-run fuel supplier Petrobras a six-year phase-in period to introduce low-sulphur diesel. Minc's ministry portrayed the deal as a victory, but according to Capobianco, "It was a huge defeat for the construction of a responsible socio-environmental agenda for the country. Perhaps the biggest defeat of recent years, because it involves an environmental issue directly linked with public health and with well-recognised negative impacts."

Capobianco also criticises what he describes as Minc's "ecopragmatism" on the question of environmental licensing, mentioned in an earlier post - summarized by his phrase "dois pra lá, dois pra cá", two steps forward, two steps back. The former official says, "It doesn't work like that on environmental questions, because 'two steps back' can cause damage so serious that not even 'ten steps forward' can repair. The fact that you might receive more money to protect one cave does not minimise the loss of another. You might even lose that cave, but society needs to be clear about the consequences of that decision."

Copyright Tim Hirsch 2008. All rights reserved.