Event held in Foz do Iguaçu raised proposals, which shall be taken to the international conference in Rio de Janeiro, next year

 

A delicate balance between economic development, social inclusion, and respect to the environment. This is the tripod upon which proposals shall be based on for creating a "green economy", discussed last Friday (23), in Foz do Iguaçu, during the Green and Socially Inclusive Economy of Brazil's South Region, regional stage of the National Dialogues: Road to Rio+20, initiative, which is aims to map out proposals from all of Brazil and choose those that will taken to the world conference held in Rio de Janeiro in 2012.

"The big differential of these events is massive participation of organized civil society in the building of the agenda for Rio + 20", said Director of the International Training Centre for Local Authorities and Local Actors for Latin America (CIFAL), Gustavo Fanaya, who represented the entity in the event in Foz do Iguaçu. In his assessment, one of the strong points of the seminar was the preparation of concrete proposals, which emerged from an already established conceptual basis. "It was the moment of transforming speech into concrete proposals", he observed.

With respect to the new economic model searched by experts, Fanaya emphasized that there is neither magic solution, nor isolated solutions for this issue. "It is necessary to coordinate tools of each area, in order for them work in tune", he affirmed, with regards to government agencies, private institutions, and consumers.  "We have to search for a gradual transition model with less environmental impact, valuing social factor, and without threat to the economic issue", he said.

For the industrial sector, one of the proposals presented during Work Group "Services and industry area: Large, medium, and small enterprises" pointed out taxation as tool for inducing a more sustainable economic process. Through such tool, it would be possible, for instance, to increase tax load of companies that pollute more, and with such collection differential, subsidize companies that pollute less.

This proposal gains strength when observing that companies with less environmental and social impact are precisely those that produce in smaller scale and are economically more fragile. "Sustainable products are made in smaller scale. That is why they are more expensive. The government could offer subsidies for these products to be more competitive, stimulating companies to migrate to a greener economy", assessed Fanaya.

The other point of this proposal is to value products manufactured in the region. In this manner, the environment is benefited, since it is saved from pollution resulting from transport of goods. At present, disparity among tax benefits practiced by different Brazilian States, the so-called "tax warfare", makes a product from a State, such as Pará, for example, become more competitive than its similar versions in Paraná, three thousand kilometres away.

Cifal - Cifal is an initiative of the United Nations Institute of Training and Research Local Development Programme (UNITAR). With nine centres spread throughout five continents, CIFAL operates in the development of capacity-building programmes and in the promotion of technical cooperation for sustainable urban development, aiming to achieve the United Nations Millennium Development Goals (MDGs).