Brazil

The development objective of the Additional Financing for the Rio de Janeiro Sustainable Rural Development Project for Brazil is to increase the adoption of integrated... Show More + and sustainable farming systems approaches in specific areas of the borrower's territory, thus contributing to the higher-order objective of increasing small-scale farming productivity and competitiveness in those areas. The additional financing will be used for: enabling the completion of original project activities (19 percent of the additional loan amount) by restoring the portion of the original loan amount that has been used for the emergency rehabilitation activities associated with the natural disaster of January 2011 in the Serrana region; and scaling up the project's impact and development effectiveness (81 percent of proposed additional loan amount). The additional financing will not result in any change in the project's development objective. The additional financing will be accompanied by an extension of the closing date of the project from November 30, 2016 to November 30, 2018. This two-year extension would be necessary to complete the activities to be initiated between 2012 and 2016, as the project gradually expands to new areas. Show Less -

Ratings for the Brasilia Environmentally Sustainable Project for Brazil were as follows: outcomes were unsatisfactory; risk to development outcome was substantial; Bank... Show More + performance was moderately unsatisfactory and borrower performance was unsatisfactory. Some lessons learned includes: as part of project preparation, more emphasis should be put on assessing institutional capacity and designing arrangements and mitigation measures to carry out resettlement. Urban upgrading projects are best managed by one agency with delegated authority for all activities within the target area. The presence of an effective grievance redress mechanism is critical to improve development impact by minimizing potential impact on beneficiaries especially in cases of resettlement. The construction of resettlement housing should be prioritized in the chronogram of major works and under the control of the implementing agency. Resettlement options should enable choice differentiated resettlement solutions, and open and frequent consultation with affected families is essential. Resettlement activities must be closely linked to the control of new irregular settlements. The Bank's safeguards policy is not always easy to implement in middle income countries that have their own policies which do not necessarily coincide with the Bank's. Although an integrated approach to environmental sanitation is considered good practice, it may be too complex for some clients. The assessment of political economy issues should be a key part of the preparation in complex/integrated development projects. Show Less -

The objective of the Tocantins Integrated Sustainable Regional Development Project for Brazil is to foster improved effectiveness of road transport and enhanced efficiency... Show More + of selected public services, in support of the borrower's integrated and territorially balanced development agenda. The project has 3 components. (1) Improving effectiveness of rural transport provision of support component will improve accessibility of the borrower's remote populations and, at the same time, foster regional economic integration and support the borrower's competitiveness and social inclusion agendas. (2) Enhanced efficiency of public services will provide the provision of support for institutional strengthening. (3) Project management component will provide support for project management in connection with the implementation and supervision of the project. Show Less -

The development objective of the Caatinga Conservation and Management - Mata Branca (GEF) Project is to contribute to the preservation, conservation, and sustainable... Show More + management of the biodiversity of the Caatinga in the states of Bahia and Ceara, while improving the quality of life of its inhabitants, through the introduction of sustainable development practices. This restructuring paper is to extend the closing date of the poject from October 31, 2012 until October 31, 2013, and to reallocate disbursement categories. The reason for this extension will be to allow more time for: a) consolidation of project results and achievements especially with respect to further mainstreaming the project's policy work on Integrated Ecosystems Management (IEM) approaches into the programs and public policies of Bahia and Ceara for the Caatinga (semi-arid biome), and concluding approximately 40 percent of community subprojects which suffered delays this year due to a major drought; b) provide a longer time horizon for ongoing environmental and socioeconomic monitoring and evaluation to better document impacts and extract lessons learned; and c) continue dissemination of lessons learned to foster further replication and testing of the IEM approach beyond the project target areas. Show Less -

Ratings for the Rio de Janeiro Sustainable Integrated Ecosystem Management (IEM) in Productive Landscapes of the North-Northwestern Fluminise (GEF) Project for Brazil... Show More + was as follows: outcomes were satisfactory, the risk to development outcome was moderate, the Bank performance was moderately satisfactory, and the Borrower performance was also moderately satisfactory. Some lessons learned included: projects seeking methodological change and requiring a strong, committed field presence need careful upstream analysis of the institutional profile and capacity of partners and co-executors. Collaborative monitoring, data-collection and storage need to be negotiated between the executors and partners to ensure that a Bank-supported project co-financed by other programs can access project-related data reflecting the performance/achievements of all players. To secure genuine collaboration on IEM longer-term, mechanisms are needed to create intersection and communication between the Recipient/Borrower and the other co-financing programs or institutions. The qualifications of the technical teams and their adequate presence on the ground, as well as their close and regular contact with beneficiaries, promote farmer confidence and the credibility of the project and its institutions. The project demonstrated that a conjunction of mechanisms and events is needed to mobilize and motivate small farmers to engage with/in biodiversity conservation through their agricultural practices and indeed as activities in their own right, on their properties. Show Less -

Ratings for the Tocantins Sustainable Regional Development Project for Brazil were as follows: outcomes were moderately satisfactory, the risk to development outcome... Show More + was low or negligible, the Bank performance was satisfactory, and the Borrower performance was moderately satisfactory. Some lessons learned included: political cycles had a clear impact on the rhythm of implementation of the Project. This challenge is amplified in multi-sector operations given the larger number of entities involved in implementation. To address this challenge, Projects should try to limit the number of entities, recognize the risk or factor in political variables in Project design. Moreover, the distribution of Bank and counterpart financing should take into account incentives or disincentives at political levels, as was the case under this operation, to ensure that activities with lower political visibility are still undertaken in a timely fashion. Although multiple institutions and stakeholders are involved in multi-sector operations, projects should design some degree of centralization under a unified Project Implementation Unit to make complex operations more manageable and expedite implementation, particularly to facilitate multiple procurement processes. From the Bank's perspective, these multi-sector operations that involve numerous activities and procurement processes inevitably rely on strengthened and intensified Bank supervision. A long term lesson learned through past Bank experiences in the State is the need to move beyond narrow approaches to improving accessibility (focusing on trunk infrastructure or isolated interventions on municipal roads), and adopting a more integrated approach both vertically, within the road network to link various road levels to provide seamless logistics, and horizontally among various other regional development requirements. This 'holistic' approach, which is inherently more complex to implement, and to which the new proposed operation is ultimately responding, relies on strong coordination between the different Government levels, ensuring that micro interventions at local level are supplemented by investments undertaken at regional and national level. Show Less -

Housing development has direct and indirect impacts on the environment. Through its design, construction, and operation, housing represents a significant point of direct... Show More + consumption of natural materials, water, and energy. Therefore, greenhouse gas emissions embodied in housing can be very significant. Moreover, in Brazil, civil construction is responsible for the largest percentage of solid waste volume generated in cities, resulting in additional environmental impacts. The housing sector also has substantial indirect environmental impacts associated with extended commuting distances from residents of housing developments and their resulting greenhouse gas emissions.The housing sector in Brazil offers substantial opportunities to improve enviromental performance. Housing developments, particularly large-scale low-cost programs, provide opportunities to minimize local and global environmental impacts through the use of energy efficient materials, design and construction guidelines, as well as performance standards. Many of these technologies and practices are appropriate to Brazilian conditions, and a number of them are already in use. Low-cost housing programs can be designed to incorporate sustainable materials and guidelines, with potentially large-scale impacts. With the launch of the Minha Casa, Minha Vida (MCMV) economic stimulus program to subsidize the construction of 1 million low-income housing units (and recent approval of a second round of subsidies for 2 million homes), Brazil is in a unique position to achieve the triumvirate of sustainable growth the social goal of reducing the national housing deficit, the economic stimulus goal of creating jobs in the construction industry, and the environmental goal of developing healthy homes and communities. Centralized funding sources like MCMV provide can be also used as models for other assisted housing programs and, potentially, market-rate housing developments as cities, developers and construction product manufacturers become more experienced in green housing technologies.
Many green construction and technology programs are already in place. Brazil has a history of promoting programs and policies related to sustainable housing design construction and maintenance, such as product certification, supply-chain, research and development, and Green Building programs. The Selo Azul Program, launched by CAIXA in 2010 with the goal of promoting green housing development in Brazil, is particularly promising. Enhancements to current programs can greatly improve sustainability of housing sector. With increasing awareness on sustainable construction, there are currently major opportunities to promote the incorporation of green construction technologies, as well as hazard-resistant technologies for climate adaptation, within formal and informal low-income housing in Brazil. Based on a review of current practices at the national and international level, as well as on interviews with public and private sector practitioners, this Policy Note presents recommendations aimed at enhancing the sustainability of low-income housing approaches in Brazil, through the provision of high quality, energy-efficient housing with minimal environmental impacts. Show Less -

This report presents the partial results related to land use, land-use change and the forestry sector from a larger multisectoral low-carbon study for Brazil. Since... Show More + the 1992 Kyoto Accord, Brazil has been committed to reducing its carbon emissions. The overall aim of this study was to support Brazil's efforts to identify opportunities to reduce its emissions in ways that foster economic development. The primary objective was to provide the Brazilian government with the technical inputs needed to assess the potential and conditions for low-carbon development in key emitting sectors. To this end, the World Bank study adopted a programmatic approach in line with the Brazilian government's long-term development objectives. These are: to anticipate the future evolution of Brazil's emissions to establish a Reference Scenario; identify and quantify lower carbon-intensive options to mitigate emissions, as well as potential options for carbon uptake; assess the costs of these low-carbon options, identify barriers to their adoption, and explore measures to overcome them; and build a low-carbon emissions scenario that meets the same development expectations. The study also analyzed the macroeconomic effects of shifting from the Reference Scenario to the low-carbon one and the financing required. Reference-scenario results for these main areas show that deforestation remains the key driver of Brazil's future emissions through 2030. The study evaluated the mitigation and carbon uptake options, assessing all the relevant sub-sectors for each sector; determined the viability of the options investigated; and finally, constructed low-carbon scenarios for each sector to assist them lowering their greenhous gas (GHG) carbon emissions. Show Less -

The worldwide carbon market is a reality. It has contributed to the implementation of projects that aim to reduce Greenhouse Gas (GHG) emissions in many different s... Show More + ectors and it has turned GHGs, represented by carbon, into economic assets that are no longer mere environmental liabilities. In this context, Brazil currently ranks third in the world in terms of the number of projects on the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM). Brazil pioneered the development of the first large scale methodology and registration for the first project in the history of the CDM. Despite Brazil's significant qualitative and quantitative participation in such projects, there is still great potential for the development of other types of CDM project activities. Given the new methodologies for CDM projects approved over the last few years and the programmatic CDM, which intends to reduce bureaucracy and accelerate the registration process for closely related projects, there exists an even greater potential for CDM projects in several sectors in Brazil. The main objective of this study was to identify the existing technical potential for low carbon projects as described above as well as to stimulate the implementation of low carbon projects in Brazil, thus contributing towards reducing and avoiding Brazil's current and projected emissions and inserting Brazil into the new low carbon economy. Generally speaking, the study focused on sectors where there is still a potential for the application of conventional techniques or technologies to reduce or avoid GHG emissions. Show Less -