Greening urban Brazil

<3 Sampa

On June 5, 2009, São Paulo became the first of Latin America’s cities to implement a citywide plan to address climate change— and the first city to do so in the developing world. Codified into law, the bill aims to reduce São Paulo’s citywide greenhouse gas emissions by 30% of 2005 levels by 2012 through several measures comprehensively focused on transportation, renewable energy, energy efficiency, waste management, construction and land use.

I love discussing São Paulo’s environmental vanguardism amongst people who love cities and/or environmental policy because the idea of São Paulo as an “innovator" is, on all grounds, incompatible with the global imaginary. Amongst planners and non-planners, good urban governance is rarely associated with Rio de Janeiro or São Paulo. The grand narrative of Brazilian cities denounces São Paulo as a concrete jungle dominated by sprawl, cars, and crime, where Rio de Janeiro is a paradoxical landscape of poverty and natural beauty. Those who have visited Brazil often slip into the quintessential comparison between São Paulo and Los Angeles, so it is little wonder that Curitiba and Porto Alegre continue to skirt about as "model cities.”

The "megacities" rating system

The experience of São Paulo is exceptional in that it challenges common conceptions of city management at two levels: nationally, universal take-away lessons in urban management exist outside of its more ruly, mid-sized cities. Globally, it contradicts the generalization that developing world megacities are “environmentally stressed” and inherently ill-equipped to address the challenges that both rapid urbanization and climate change present. As discussed by researchers who have closely followed the evolution of Brazilian environmentalism, such portrayals have attempted to legitimize the perception that countries like Brazil are late adopters of ideas of environmental responsibility, and thus necessarily solicit the influence of international environmental norms and standards.

Not that international standards and agreements are themselves inherently wrong, ineffectual, or out to keep the nation state hostage, as the tea-partier so dramatically proclaims. Nor has transnational activism had a negligent effect on Brazilian environmental politics. 

Rather, I want to argue that political opportunities in Brazil have arisen from major political transformations which have been more important in shaping outcomes than assumed. The transition to democracy in Brazil set up a national urban reform process which recognized the democratic management of cities, the social function of property and the city, and the autonomy of municipal governments, among others.

Students protesting for the end of the
military dictatorship (1964-1985)

In the State of Sao Paulo in the 1970s, politicians were incited by state actors and civil society to create regulatory frameworks that would mitigate serious environmental problems caused by air pollution and industrial emissions. For example, the municipality of Cubatão reached international press, due to its unusually high rates of anencephalia (babies born without brains) caused by lethal levels of mercury from local factory emissions.

And this is just barely scraping the surface. This multilevel interplay between Brazilian environmentalism and the new political spaces created by urban reform makes São Paulo the municipal Captain Planet that it is today.

Cities, especially third-world megacities, are now center stage in environmental policy-making. Therefore, an understanding of the case of São Paulo lends the notion that, in guiding environmental urban reform in the global South, the ways that domestic political processes shape urban “greening" must be taken into account. 

Replacing"communism" with "megacities" - I
guess it goes against their definition to ask 
meta narratives to show some originality.