An anonymous reader quotes a report from Yahoo News: Brazil said it was raising its climate commitments on Monday at the start of the COP26 summit, including ending illegal deforestation by 2028, marking a change of tone after more than two years of soaring destruction under President Jair Bolsonaro. Speaking by live video link, Brazil’s Environment minister, Joaquim Pereira Leite, said on Monday the country would cut its greenhouse gas emissions by 50% by 2030, compared with a previous commitment to reduce emissions by 43% over that period.

In a plan to meet that target presented by the Environment Ministry, Brazil moved forward by two years its existing commitment to end deforestation by 2030. That trajectory includes cutting deforestation 15% annually between 2022 and 2024, 40% in 2025 and 2026 and 50% in 2027. Deforestation hit a 12-year high in Brazil’s Amazon rainforest in 2020, with preliminary government data showing a possible single-digit decline for 2021. […] Pereira Leite also said Brazil would formalize a commitment to become “climate neutral” by 2050 during COP26, a promise first made by Bolsonaro in April. Brazil announced some ambitious environmental promises, but as CNN points out, the country has a dismal track record. “During Bolsonaro’s first year in office, in 2019, deforestation in the Amazon rose 34%. The next year, it rose another 7%, according to INPE, the government agency that monitors deforestation in the country.”

Some climate activists are “urging delegates at Cop26 not to trust the ‘greenwashing’ promises of Jair Bolsonaro’s government,” reports The Guardian. They say the world “should pay more attention to the destructive policies of the recent past than vague promises about the future, which they say are aimed at securing cash.”

“Nowadays Brazil has an anti-environmental policy,” says Suely Vaz, a former head of the environment regulator Ibama who now works for the Climate Obsevatory. “They are paralyzing everything. Deforestation and forest fires are out of control. This must change to ensure that climate money — which is important for our country — can be used in very detailed, specified way.”

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Source: Slashdot – Brazil Pledges To End Illegal Deforestation By 2028