Ecobreves – BRAZIL: New National Science Team for Climate Change

By IPS Correspondents and - - Reprint | | Print |

RIO DE JANEIRO, Apr 27 2009 (IPS) - Brazil has created its own 300-scientist panel to assess climate change. The team will update the national inventory of greenhouse-effect emissions, which is still based on 1994 data. It is a domestic version of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, created under the auspices of the United Nations in 1988.

The experts will collect information important to Brazil in four groups, whose missions have yet to be defined in detail, said Branca Bastos, director of climate change issues at the Environment Ministry.

Rubens Born, director of the non-governmental group Vitae Civilis, told Tierramérica in an interview that he thinks it is an “interesting” initiative, whose reports should push immediate policy decisions “aimed at short-term adaptation measures that will have long-term effects.”