Questões de Concursos EPE

Within the sphere of environmental law, the climate crisis is increasingly understood to be an intersectional challenge that implicates and exacerbates existing systemic challenges and prevailing pathways of inequality. From this vantage point climate change also creates opportunities for rethinking the role of law in limiting the destructive impacts of climate change and moving towards a more sustainable and equitable world in the process. This view is advanced by the climate justice movement, which is swelling in influence worldwide. Drawing from the environmental justice movement, the climate justice movement exposes not only how social and economic inequality has led to and perpetuates patterns of climate change, but also how climate change deepens inequality by disproportionately affecting the most vulnerable members of society. Climate justice seeks greater emphasis on this issue and advocates on the part of those most affected by climate change. The movement envisions a world which simultaneously curtails the negative effects of climate change and reshapes existing social, political, and economic relationships along the way.

Amidst the overlapping crises of modern times, the modern climate justice movement is reviving dialogue at the intersection of feminism, environmentalism, social and economic justice, and other progressive law reform movements, as well as creating the space and momentum for intersectional ideas to flourish. For lawyers and legal scholars, the opportunity is to see climate change and environmental degradation within its broader social context and to seize upon the rule of law as a powerful tool for change.

Nowhere are these intersecting challenges as acute as in the context of energy. One of the principal aims of the climate justice movement is to achieve a just and equitable transition from an extractive economy to a regenerative economy. This requires transitioning from fossil fuel-dependent to low and zero-carbon economies. However, the pathways for overhauling energy systems worldwide remain indeterminate. Energy systems are evolving in response to a combination of law and policy changes, developments in energy technologies, and market forces. Moreover, given both the entrenched nature of fossil fuel economies and the varied social, political, economic, and environmental factors that shape energy transition, pathways to decarbonization are bound to be beset with complex trade-offs, such as those between energy security and environmental objectives, or between energy choice and economies of scale. The precise contours of these systemic changes vary from country to country, and remain under-explored both within their national contexts and from a broader transnational perspective. This knowledge gap is critical. Understanding how, why, and to what end states are restructuring their energy economies is essential for transitioning to more environmentally sustainable and just societies worldwide. In short, this is an area in need of experimentation and iterative learning. It is a subject ripe for greater scholarly focus, particularly at the transnational level, where improved learning and sharing is indispensable for achieving the global-level shifts needed to address climate change. Adapted from: Etty, Thijs et al. “Energy Transition in a Transnational World.” Transnational Environmental Law 10.2 (2021): 197–204. Available athttps://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/transnational-environmentallaw/article/energy-transition-in-a-transnationalworld/9F9D4229588B39C0E5916DFBE82EA046

MANAUS, BRAZIL—Jochen Schöngart darts back and forth along an escarpment just above the Amazon River, a short water taxi ride from downtown Manaus, Brazil. It’s still early this October morning in 2023, but it’s already hot and his face is beaded with sweat. “Look, there’s a piece of ceramic!” he says, nodding to a worn shard lodged between boulders, likely a relic of an earlier civilization. It’s not the only one.

Schöngart, a forest scientist at the National Institute of Amazon Research (INPA), stoops and stares at the bedrock at his feet. Well below the river’s normal level for this time of year, the rock bears a gallery of life-size faces, perhaps carved during a megadrought 1000 years ago. Now, they have been exposed again by a new drought, the worst in the region’s modern history.

In the previous 4 months, only a few millimeters of rain have fallen in this city of 2 million at the confluence of the Negro and Amazon rivers. Normally it gets close to a half a meter during the same period. The Amazon sank steadily beginning in June, as it does most years during the dry season. But by mid-October, the port’s river gauge reached the lowest level observed since the record began in 1902. Freighters coming up from the Atlantic Ocean—the city’s primary supply line—were blocked by shoals. Factories furloughed workers.

Making matters worse, the drought coincided with a series of week-long heat waves. In September and October, withering conditions persisted across the Amazon, and temperatures here peaked at 39°C, 6°C above normal. Desiccated jungle set ablaze by farmers enveloped the city in choking smoke. Then, in the season’s most freakish episode, a sandstorm blotted out the Sun.

Drought and heat are only half of the story of the changes unfolding in the heart of the world’s largest rainforest. Schöngart and collaborators’ research on the river here has shown that for decades, while dry-season low water has been plummeting, rainyseason high water has been rising. The city has experienced frequent major flooding in recent years because of heavy rains across much of the Amazon Basin, forcing the officials to erect temporary wooden walkways above streets of the historic waterfront.

Schöngart and other researchers expect such changes to intensify as global climate warms. The current drought provided a grim preview, killing river dolphins and fish, and threatening livelihoods for communities along the river. If the combination of higher highs and lower lows becomes the new norm, the ramifications could extend throughout the Amazon Basin and even beyond, threatening the very existence of the forest—which harbors much of the planet’s biodiversity, has a far-reaching influence over regional and global climate, and sustains millions of people.

“We are undergoing massive changes in the hydrological cycle” of the Amazon Basin, Schöngart says. The question now, he says, is whether its ecosystems and people can adapt.

Adapted from: https://www.science.org/content/article/amazon-river-may-alteredforever-climate-change