Is TypeWhizz Real Or Another Online Scam? Let’s InvestigateA study published in Nature Sustainability shows that large swaths of land occupied by traditional communities in northeastern Brazil are being privatized by wind and solar power companies.
Labeled as a solution for global warming, renewable energy sources are receiving hefty incentives from both the public and private sectors. In Brazil alone, the installed wind energy capacity expanded nearly tenfold in the decade between 2011 and 2021, from 1.2% to 11.4% of the country’s energy mix. Solar power grew even more rapidly, by 26 times — from 0.1% to 2.6% of the mix. And if the federal government’s plans are carried out, this expansion will only accelerate over the decades to come..
The researchers also found that 64% of the wind farms are located on private land; in the case of solar farms, that proportion is 96%. In most cases, the land titles were obtained a few years before or after the first investments were made in the respective projects. The study flags this pattern as an indication that “most of the privatizations are directly linked to development of a project.”
“The imperative of climate change has strong impact because it legitimizes certain types of access to and control over public lands,” says study co-author Michael Klingler, a researcher at BOKU University’s Institute of Sustainable Economic Development in Austria. The government offers a range of tax incentives and facilities to companies in the sector, justifying them on the basis of the climate agenda. Last year, for example, President Luiz Inácio Lula da SilvaWind and solar farms receive foreign investments and support from the government, which uses the environmental agenda as justification for offering tax breaks and other incentives to the companies. Image courtesy of Thomas Bauer/CPT/H3000.
For Fábio Pitta, a researcher at Harvard University and the University of São Paulo, it seems like déjà vu. He recalls how it was also Lula who, in his first term in office in the early 2000s, rolled out a stimulus for ethanol production. That, together with the high price of sugar on the international market, led to the aggressive spread of sugarcane farming in Brazil, which also directly impacted small farmers and agricultural workers.