Challenges in the fight against climate change and the struggle for environmental justice
With the recent climate-related tragedies affecting Brazil and the world, discussions about environmental racism have emerged, shedding light on questions concerning the intersections of race within the climate debate.
After heavy rains in the west of Rio de Janeiro in early January 2024, the Minister for Racial Equality, Anielle Franco, said that the damage caused by the rains was ‘the effect of environmental and climactic racism’. Members of the Opposition criticized the Minister's position, saying that she had invented the combination of the term ‘racism’ and ‘environmental’ and that white people are also affected by the rains. The minister defended herself, saying that the term was coined in the United States and has been around for decades. A few days after the repercussions, she said in an interview with the Folha de São Paulo newspaper that ‘environmental racism is the lack of structure so that people can survive. The heat you feel in Copacabana is not the heat you feel in Belford Roxo, in the Baixada Fluminense[peripheral communities].’ The Minister for the Environment, Marina Silva, came out in defense of Anielle, reiterating that environmental racism was taken up for discussion by the Brazilian committee at COP 28 in Dubai...
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