GEO Brasil - UNEP

presentation tion of the
Coordination and editing Team
GEO Brazil was developed by IBAMA in partnership with a
wide variety of public institutions, universities and nongovernmental
organisations. It represents the enormous
effort of all those involved directly or indirectly in the
production of this report. This publication provides a picture
of the Brazilian environmental situation in its many aspects
and focuses on the causes and consequences of pressures
and impacts and the corresponding political solutions. GEO
Brazil provides possible scenarios based on the observed
tendencies related to these elements. The report is based
on methodology adopted in the development of the Global
Environment Outlook – GEO of the United Nations
Environment Programme – UNEP, with IBAMA serving as
the Collaboration Centre for Latin America and the Caribbean
since 1997.
The conclusion of GEO Brazil and its launching coincide
with the World Summit on Sustainable Development
(Rio+10), to be held in Johannesburg in August and
September of 2002. The presence of the publication at this
important world event on the environment essentially aims
at showing the Brazilian environmental situation to the world.
It also aims at demonstrating the advances, the problems
and the outlooks for the various environmental, social and
economic tendencies dealt with in GEO Brazil. At the same
time, this document is a document oriented towards action,
expressing recommendations on effective methods that
can contribute to the consolidation of sustainable
development in the country and the implantation of the
basic frameworks described in the recently announced
Brazilian Agenda 21.
With GEO Brazil and the Brazilian Agenda 21 in Brazil, the
Brazilian government and society have shown themselves
to have an effective commitment to sustainable
development. This is especially true in terms of the
commitments that were made during UNCED 92, known as
Rio 92. At this International Summit Brazil was often the
protagonist of leadership and initiative in building
consensus, negotiations and partnerships in a wide variety
of countries, institutions and representatives of the global
community in order to design and consolidate
commitments for sustainable development.
The development of GEO Brazil was an effort that
reproduced this integrated, participatory, consulting and
constructive process on a smaller scale. This document
was developed with consensus and was technically as
consistent and valid as its authors and institutional partners.
The result is a document that will be of great value to all of
Brazilian society in its various organised sectors, specially
the government and non-governmental institutions,
universities and learning centres, the private sector, civil
society, legislators, government representatives, mayors,
and countless others including the common citizen who is
interested in environmental themes.
One of the by-products of the development of GEO Brazil
was that it provided the opportunity for the beginning of a
consolidation process in terms of a national environment
information system. Previously, information that had been
collected and stored in the various partnership institutions
was found in a broken up form. This process brought about
the need for a revision of omissions, gaps, inconsistencies
and duplicities. It also brought about the search for a
solution to these problems. As a consequence this has
been helping the country improve its environmental
statistics and its institutional ability to develop
environmental reports using international standards.
The strengthening of the institutional ability for
environmental evaluation and spreading of this information
as part of a global project can be added as another positive
by-product of GEO Brazil. This also occurred for the
development of productive global exchange partnerships
and through the training of IBAMA specialists and those
from other institutions in adopting the methodology of
GEO/UNEP. In addition, another positive by-product of GEO
Brazil was the increase in the institutional capacity for
obtaining funds for environmental research. This element
was supported by the recognition UNEP expressed for this
project.