The position paper analyzes the impact of the Bi-regional Association Agreements between Mercosur and the European Union and Mercosur and the European Free Trade Association, which aim to promote trade liberalization between the blocks in different economic sectors. The document suggests the interruption of the ratification of the Agreements since, besides the potential negative socio-environmental and climate impacts they present, they have been discussed behind closed doors, without the participation of civil society and other international observers. Besides the democratic issue, the text highlights the neocolonial character of the agreements based on the stimulus to deepen the international division of trade, as well as its consequences for economic development and human rights.

The report As soy moves forward: impacts of Hidrovias do Brasil in Itaituba, Pará, published today by the Institute of Socioeconomic Studies (INESC), reveals that the logistics company Hidrovias do Brasil has systematically failed to comply with a series of measures that should be adopted to mitigate the negative impacts of its operations in the Itaituba region (Pará, Brazil) which, in recent years, has become an important transportation hub for the global commodities supply chain by connecting the BR-163 highway to the Tapajós River.

During the high season of soybean harvesting, about 1500 trucks travel through Miritituba daily. The district of Itaituba is home to 15,000 people. This territory plays a fundamental role in the reestablishment of the Brazilian Amazon as a channel for grain exports from Mato Grosso to the Atlantic, and then to China, the European Union and other countries. To this day, at least 41 new ports are planned or under construction alongside the main rivers in the region.

Several projects have already been built in this area, such as hydroelectric plants, waterways, and mines. Since 2013, at least 10 industrial ports – most of them linked to agribusiness – have been built around the city of Itaituba. In Miritituba there are five Cargo Transshipment Stations (ETC, from the Portuguese Estação de Transbordo de Carga), which are private port facilities that turn the Tapajós river into a corridor for the transportation of grains through the Tapajós and Amazonas rivers to the Pará and Amapá ports. The Dossier aims to assess the effects of ports in the region, focusing on the logistics company Hidrovias do Brasil (HDB).

The logistic company has the International Finance Corporation (IFC) – the World Bank’s investment arm for the private sector – among its shareholders. IFC demanded that Hidrovias do Brasil complies with the Performance Standards on Social and Environmental Sustainability (PSs) in order to receive the investment. PSs are a set of measures necessary to prevent, reduce or mitigate socio-environmental negative effects of its operations in the region. 

However, Inesc’s report shows that IFC’s apparently strict socio-environmental policy is not being complied with by Hidrovias do Brasil. The report was based on complaints filed by residents of Itaituba and Miritituba, representatives of social movements, indigenous leaders, among others, and analyzes in detail each sustainability goal that should be being carried out by Hidrovias do Brasil, and points out flaws in the survey made by the institutional investor. 

“Hidrovias do Brasil was financed by a bank that has a robust socio-environmental policy, which in principle involves monitoring the company to make sure that, if negative impacts are expected, they should be mitigated or compensated. We can appeal to the bank to monitor the company and actually enforce these policies for several reasons. In light of the above, this dossier is a first step for IFC to resume monitoring Hidrovias do Brasil and enforce the institution’s own socio-environmental policy,” says Livi Gerbase, policy advisor at INESC and author of the study.

One example is the construction of alternative routes for trucks to go around Miritituba instead of through the city, which was promised by Hidrovias do Brasil to the IFC and was not executed. In addition to the increase in traffic and road accidents, the 1500 trucks generate air pollution and leave soy remains (waste) scattered throughout the town, causing serious damage to the health of the population, and interfering with local fauna and flora. A resident of Miritituba sums up the feeling of living among the heavy traffic: “Here, our people compete with the trucks for space, and the weaker of the two have to run”. 

Violence rates have increased, as well as illegal drug trade and prostitution, which are closely related to the crowd of truck drivers who arrive daily. These are just some impacts on the local population. Most of the impacts have yet to be mapped by the appropriate agencies or public authorities. 

Residents of Miritituba also reveal other violations by Hidrovias do Brasil and other port companies in the region, such as the prohibition of fishing in places traditionally used by fishermen, through the use of cordons as security measures for five ports installed side by side. In addition, fishermen also denounce that the soy transported on barges is dropped in the rivers and ends up in the belly of fish. 

Indigenous people of the Munduruku also suffer from Hidrovias operations in the region. In its report to IFC, the company claimed that indigenous and traditional communities were not affected by the construction of its Cargo Transshipment Stations. 

Reality is something quite different. There are two Munduruku urban settlements on the banks of the Tapajós that deal with the ports and their effects daily: Praia do Índio and Praia do Mangue. According to the Munduruku people, however, the entire indigenous population of the Middle Tapajós feels the project’s effects, as the impacts spread through the network formed by these communities, affecting other indigenous territories in the region, which has 868 indigenous inhabitants, according to 2019 data. Despite this, there was no establishment of free, prior, and informed consent with indigenous peoples by Hidrovias do Brasil or any other ports installed in the region – a clear violation of Convention 169 of the International Labor Organization, an agreement to which Brazil is a signatory. 

Finally, another serious complaint from residents is about their participation in dialogues with the company. They report that meetings take place on a purely formal basis with those impacted, but they are not actually heard. 

“Listening to the population only happens on scheduled public hearings. In fact, all they want from the population is the signature on the minutes, while the whole project is already being completed and implemented [regardless of consultation]”, explains Josenaldo Luna de Castro, member of the Management Council for the Supervision of Projects and Investments in the District of Miritituba (CONGEFIMI). 

The council was created in 2018, aiming to be a tool for monitoring the performance of companies such as Hidrovias do Brasil in the region. While violating the rights of local people and traditional communities, Hidrovias do Brasil, with the success of its investments in the Amazon, completed an initial public offering (IPO) raising 608 million dollars in 2020. According to an article published by Mongabay and Diálogo Chino in November last year, in a prospectus provided in its IPO, Hidrovias do Brasil described its port of Itaituba as a key asset of the company, with no consultation with the Munduruku population. The company also warned investors that environmental regulations could severely restrict their ability to operate their business and logistical operations could “result in damage to the environment and to indigenous and quilombola [traditional] communities, the extent and repair costs of which are not possible to estimate”.

Dossier: the complete dossier and de Executive Summary are available here.

Dacia Ibiapina, film-maker

“We, in order to live in an integrated way, in order to have welfare, we need to respect all lives, without hierarchizing and without classifying.” (Nêgo Bispo, December, 2019).

The mark of the Antonio Bispo dos Santos’ thinking, Nêgo Bispo, is originality. Provoked to talk about Covid-19, he chosed to address the socio-environmental aspect. “In Brazil, there is over-discrimination in relation to the semi-arid biome.” And he amended: “Underestimate a biome is underestimate the lives that exist there. It is to practice the pandemic. All lives matter. All biomes matter”.

This video was made respecting social distance. Production and direction are by Dacia Ibiapina, with support from Inesc and Conaq. The testimony was recorded by Sérgio Gomes with his cell phone, in December, 2020. The other images were recorded by Ivan Costa, in Saco Curtume, a quilombola community where Nêgo Bispo lives, in São João do Paiuí (PI). It was during the celebrations of Nêgo Bispo 60^th anniversary, in December, 2019, before Covid-19. Directed by Dácia Ibiapina, edited by Isabelle Araújo, sound edited by Guile Martins and music by Luiz de Chubel.

Quilombolas in the pandemic Covid-19 context

Carmela Zigoni, political advisor of Inesc

The Covid-19 pandemic killed  more than 179 quilombolas  in Brazil, and infected more than 5,000. The data are from the National Coordination of Black Rural Quilombola Communities (Conaq), which has recorded cases and deaths, as health agencies do not have ethnic-racial markers that make possible to identify this population.

Quilombola communities are present throughout the national territory and are one of the groups most affected by big projects with negative socioenvironmental impacts, such as mining and agribusiness. Only 7% of quilombola territories are officialised in Brazil, despite the right provided for in the 1988 Constitution and Decree 4887/2004. Since 2017, no budgetary resources have been allocated for land regularization for these territories.

In contrast, quilombolas’ territories remain resisting, and seek to practice other models of non-predatory production, such as agroecology and family farming.

Quilombolas have been fighting since the beginning of the pandemic against invisibility and for specific public policies that respect their culture and the vulnerability of their communities. However, they have been systematically victimized by institutional racism. Throughout 2020, they focused on the pursuit of their rights, which materialized by ADPF 742 sent to the Supreme Federal Court.

The year 2021 started with the news that quilombolas are being excluded from priority groups for access to the new coronavirus vaccine.

Antônio Bispo dos Santos’ contribution to the reflection on the pandemic, made through a video directed by filmmaker Dacia Ibiapina, fits in this context. For Bispo, the pandemic is the result of broader hierarchical and discrimination processes, in which not only humans are affected, but all beings of what humans call nature. This false opposition between humanity and nature intensifies destructive socio-environmental processes that led to the Covid-19 pandemic.

His reflections on enduring and contemporary coloniality in Brazilian society, as well as his concepts of confluence and transfluence as forms of counter-coloniality, are developed in the book Colonization – Quilombos! Ways and Meanings (2019), as well as in the article We belong to the land (2018). In these works, Bispo points to the infeasibility of the colonial model – barely disguised by so-called democratic institutions – for the reproduction of quilombolas’ ways of life, and of life itself on the planet.

When Antonio Bispo dos Santos elaborated a local concept of pandemic in the video “Caatinga, Hierarchies and Pandemics”, he takes a stand in relation to this coloniality, bringing to the center the quilombola world view and ways of life and its particular relationship with the territory, seen as a space for sharing between people and the environment.

A pioneering study released today by the Institute for Socioeconomic Studies (Inesc) shows how the federal government’s fiscal austerity measures and the passage of Constitutional Amendment 95 undermined the social policies needed to protect the most vulnerable population from the current pandemic.

Entitled O Brasil com baixa imunidade – Balanço do Orçamento Geral da União 2019, [freely, Brazil with low immunity – Review of the 2019 Federal General Budget]  the report shows that, from 2014 up to last year, the federal government’s ongoing fiscal effort resulted in a 28.9% cut in the country’s discretionary expenditure on social programs. Over 2018-2019 alone, social spending dropped by 8.6%.

The 2019 budget for the health care sector, which has historically suffered from underfunding of the national health public system (SUS), did not increase year-over-year, remaining at a level similar to that of 2014. On the other hand, the Brazilian population grew by seven million people over the same period, thus revealing a sharp reduction in per capita health expenditure.

“Brazil is visibly weaker to tackle the challenges posed by the pandemic”, states Inesc policy advisor Livi Gerbase.

In addition to the health care budget, Inesc’s publication assessed execution of the Federal government Budget in 2019 for seven other public policy areas: education, right to the city, socio-environmental, child and adolescent, racial equality, women, and indigenous peoples.

For the specialist in Tax Justice, even though the Covid-19 crisis primarily affects  the health care system, its effects spill over to every public policy. The reason for that is because quarantining the population paralyzed productive activity, which will trigger a deep recession, an increase in joblessness, and a worsening of social inequalities.

“In a country where the poor, blacks, women, and indigenous peoples are always the most penalized, the Covid-19 pandemic will make things even more difficult for this large swath of the population”, asserts Livi.

Inesc’s study concludes that cutting expenditure for the sake of meeting a fiscal target comes at a very high price, especially for the most vulnerable groups who disproportionately foot the bill. Conversely, the federal government commemorated a reduction of the primary deficit between 2018 and 2019, which went down from 1.8% of GDP to 1%, or R$ 95.1 billion. This result was largely achieved on account of the suspension by the federal government of authorized executions last year, a measure only revoked close to the end of the year, thus preventing expenditure execution.

“Over and beyond a analysis of these figures, we sought to find out if the public policies and their respective budgets were at the service of the people, particularly those most in need, and not just to protect the public debt, often enriching economic sectors already quite privileged”, stresses the Inesc advisor.

Still according to Livi Gerbase, this is the first report of a series of annual reports to be published by Inesc for the purpose of tracking federal expenditure on promotion of human rights. The Budget and Rights Methodology, Metodologia Orçamento & Direitos, used in the document, submits federal budget analysis to a “human rights test” hinged on five requirements or pillars: funding with tax justice, maximum mobilization of available resources, progressive realization of rights, nondiscrimination, and social participation.

Among the measures  proposed by Inesc to tackle the upcoming recession are:

– revoking Constitutional Amendment 95;

– implementing policies safeguarding jobs and wages, including casual labor;

– rebuilding the national health system (SUS) budget;

– strengthening environmental oversight bodies for sustainable growth;

– reforming the tax system, including taxation of profit and dividends, and fairer tax rates to stop the super-rich, i.e., those earning 320 minimum wages-plus, from continuing to pay less than a 2% effective income tax rate;

– approving, on an urgent basis, the Fund for the Maintenance and Development of Basic Education and Valorization of Education Professionals (Fundeb) and;

– providing transparency to anti-Covid-19 activities, with detailed accounting of area’s budget execution.

Below are some examples of social programs that had their budgets cut.

Education

In Education, public investments fell, in real terms, from R$ 109 billion in 2018 to R$ 106 billion in 2019, a drop that could have been avoided had the total budget appropriated, amounting to R$ 123 billion, been fully executed.

The Coordination for the Improvement of Higher Education Personnel (Capes) and the National Council for Scientific and Technological Development (CNPq) lost half of their government research grant funding in the last five years. From 2015 onwards, Capes’s budget, for example, was R$ 4.5 billion, down from R$ 9 billion.

Racial and Gender Equality

This area was one of the most negatively affected by the federal government in 2019. The racial equality budget varied negatively by 45.77% in comparison with the previous year. When considering the period from 2014 to 2019, funds for racial equality policies decreased, in real terms, by 81%. The same happened with women’s policies, whose budget fell by 75%.

Environment

Starting in 2017, budget execution of the Ministry of Environment (MMA) falls steeply only to reach 2019 with the ministry’s lowest budget execution since budget analyses began in 2012. R$ 2.68 billion were executed – an 8.6% decrease over 2018 and 20% in relation to 2012.

Right to the City

To budgetary item “Urbanism” was added a significant part of the actions and programs carried out by the abolished Ministry of Cities, such as urban services and collective urban transportation. In 2019 funds appropriated were 50% lower than in 2012.

Indigenous Health

In 2019, budget execution  regarding indigenous health was R$ 1.48 billion against R$ 1.76 billion in 2018, roughly R$ 280 million less, thus compromising health care services to this group, which exhibits the worst indicators in comparison with the rest of the population as regards the cases of suicide, malnutrition, child mortality, and tuberculosis.

National Education Program (PNE)

For 2019 and 2020, PNE forecast appropriations amounting to 7% and 10% of GDP, respectively. With the budget cut, this percentage should not exceed the 5% reached in 2018. Last year, the Ministry of Education simply excluded the Student Cost-Quality criterion (or CAQ, which established funding as a function of the quality of basic education), from the ministry’s expenditure.

Youth and Adult Education Program (EJA)

The responsibility of the federal government, the Youth and Adult Education Program (EJA) had its resources reduced from R$ 76 million to R$ 2.4 million last year. According to the 2019 School Census, EJA enrolment decreased by 7.7% over the period, but, since there are no surveys to identify the reasons for this drop, the hypothesis that emerges is a shortage of program places for applicants. With that, the country risks failing to accomplish the goals of reducing functional illiteracy and increasing adult schooling.

Protection to Children and Adolescents

Expenditure on child and adolescent basic health care policies, considering the financial execution of both Budget Plans, plunged from R$ 17.5 million in 2018 to R$ 6.81 million last year.

The Ten-Year Plan approved by the National Council for the Rights of the Child and the Adolescent (CONANDA) comprised, at the time it was launched, in 2012, 13 actions. But only four were implemented in 2019. And just 27.4% of the R$ 159.45 million authorized for 2019 was executed.

In 2019, budget appropriation for a specific program designed to fight against children and teenage sexual violence nearly disappeared. Tackling this crime was merged into a more general program that includes several forms of violence against children and teenagers, thus reducing the transparency of specific actions. Even so, in 2019 no funds were executed regarding this program.

Child Labor

More than 1.8 million children and adolescents aged 5 to 17 years were engaged in child labor in 2016 (continuous national household survey PNAD). Despite  the goal of putting an end to this malaise by 2025, expenditure for the eradication of child labor in 2018 and 2019 had no budgeted federal funds.

About INESC – The Institute for Socioeconomic Studies (Inesc) is a nongovernmental, nonprofit, nonpartisan organization based in Brasília. Since its creation in 1979, Inesc has advocated for democracy and human rights, in addition to fighting against all forms of discrimination and inequality. Inesc was one of the five civil society organizations that launched the campaign A Renda Básica que Queremos [freely, the basic income we want], an initiative that culminated in emergency aid amounting to R$ 600 per individual to be distributed to millions of vulnerable Brazilians affected by the pandemic.

Access to Medicines Thematic Budget (OTMED): 10-year review of federal resources for pharmaceutical assistance. Study presents evaluation of financial executions of the Ministry of Health with medicines from 2008 to 2018.

Madrid, 12 December 2019 – A joint statement signed by over 100 civil society organizations on the crisis of deforestation and burning in the Amazon was launched today at the 25th annual conference (COP 25) of the UN Convention on Climate Change in Madrid, Spain. The document was presented by environmental and human rights activists at a press conference and a special event organized by the environmental caucus of the Brazilian Congress.

Congressman Nilto Tatto, who chairs the environmental caucus, said the declaration represents a “provocation” to members of Parliament and government agencies to address “what is necessary and possible for Brazil to meet its goals for reducing deforestation and greenhouse gas emissions under the Paris Agreement”.

The document, endorsed by Tatto and other members of Congress, calls attention to the causes of a major increase in deforestation and burning rates in recent months that jeopardize both ecosystem services of the rainforest and the rights of local populations, highlighting the need for major changes in policies and rhetoric of the administration of President Jair Bolsonaro.

A major criticism focuses on the dismantling of public institutions responsible for prevention and control of deforestation and burning in the Amazon, facilitating illegal activities of predatory land grabbing, miners and loggers. Both direct actions and omissions of the Bolsonaro government are directly linked to the spike in rates of Amazonian deforestation and burning in 2019, according to the co-signing organizations.

At the declaration’s launch at COP 25, Márcio Astrini, Public Policy Coordinator for Greenpeace Brazil stressed that Amazon deforestation is not synonymous with development.  “If deforestation brought development, the Amazon would be the most developed place in South America,” he quipped.

Astrini recalled that in the past, Brazil implemented strategies that contributed to an 83% decrease in deforestation rates between 2004 and 2012, combining actions to expand protected areas – including territories of indigenous peoples and other traditional populations – improved enforcement against environmental crimes and incentives for sustainable management of forests and more efficient use of already cleared lands.

“This has all been discarded by the current government and that is why deforestation is on the rise again.  With the Amazon, Brazil has a tremendous opportunity, but unfortunately the choice of the Bolsonaro administration has been to transform it into a problem” stated Astrini, stressing that the Brazilian Congress needs to work assiduously, together with civil society organizations, to prevent further backsliding on the country’s social and environmental agenda.

The co-signers of the declaration call on the Bolsonaro government to change course and to reorient decision-making towards respect for the Brazilian Constitution and associated environmental and human rights legislation, including international accords to which Brazil is a party; including efforts under the Paris Agreement to avoid a rise of average global temperatures beyond 1.5 degrees Celsius in relation to pre-industrial levels.

Specific demands on the federal government, highlighted in the declaration, include the resumption of a successful action plan for the prevention of deforestation in the Amazon (known as PPCDAm), strengthening of enforcement capacities vis-à-vis environmental crimes and a halt to official incentives for public land grabbing, deforestation and other predatory uses of natural resources.

The signers of the joint statement also called on the international community to guarantee effective mechanisms to ensure that imports of agribusiness, logging and mining commodities from the Amazon do not originate from areas marked by illegal deforestation, land grabbing and human rights violations.  Similarly, the declaration challenges foreign investors to adopt robust guidelines aimed at ending deforestation and strengthening a low carbon economy in the Amazon, with respect for the rights and livelihoods of indigenous peoples and other local communities.

The joint declaration stemmed from a seminar recently organized by CSOs, Federal Deputy Tatto and the environmental commission of the Brazilian Chamber of Deputies, entitled “Deforestation and Burning in the Amazon: Trends, Dynamics and Solutions”. The event brought together members of parliament, scientists, public institutions and representatives of social movements and other civil society organizations.

At the closing of the launch event at COP 25, Tatto assured participants that the Congressional environmental caucus will carefully review the joint civil society declaration in order to identify proposals that can be translated into parliamentary action.

Link to read the full CSO declaration (in Portuguese, English and Spanish) and watch a companion video: www.inesc.org.br/deforestation

Photographs: Agnes Franco.

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PRESS CONTACTS

Thaisa Pimpão

thaisapimpao@omundoquequeremos.com.br

cell/whatsapp: +55 11 99904-0014

In December 2019, at COP 25 of the UN Climate Change Convention (UNFCCC) in Madrid, Brazilian environmental and human rights activists launched a joint declaration on the crisis of deforestation and burning in the Brazilian Amazon.  Signed by 110 civil society organizations, networks and social movements, the declaration presents a critical analysis of recent trends and drivers of deforestation and burning in the Amazon, as well as consequences for the global climate crisis and other social and environmental impacts.   The declaration also presents a call to action, aimed at mobilizing Brazilian society and the international community to take concrete actions to defend the Amazon and the rights of its peoples.  The declaration was issued in English, Spanish and Portuguese:

Read the civil society declaration here

Read the civil society declaration in portuguese

Read the civil society declaration in spanish

The joint declaration followed the organization of a seminar entitled “Deforestation and Burning in the Amazon: Trends, Dynamics and Solutions “ hosted by the Comission for Enviroment and Sustainable Development (CMADS) of the Chamber of Deputies in the Brazilian Congress.  The event was held in Brasilia on November 28, 2019.More information about the seminar is available here: www.inesc.org.br/seminariodesmatamento/

The launching of the joint declaration at COP 25 was accompanied by a short video on produced by documentary filmmaker Todd Southgate.  The video, with versions in English and Portuguese, includes images from the Amazon and highlights from the Congressional seminar, including testimony from representatives of indigenous peoples, social movements, NGOs and public institutions.

The Institute for Socio-Economic Studies (Inesc) presented, alongside civil society partner organizations, an analysis of the implementation of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) in Brazil during the parallel events of the United Nations High Level Political Forum (HLPF) on 2030 Agenda in New York.

On July 17 the organizations presented the Spotlight 2019 report, one of the most comprehensive and independent assessment of the implementation of the 2030 Agenda. Inesc contributed with the analysis of the situation in Brazil. Text of Ana Cernov, a human rights activist, Iara Pietricovisky, Inesc’s co-director, and Nathalie Beghin, coordinator of Inesc’s policy team, shows the negative results of fiscal austerity measures compromising the viability of the goals. The authors highlighted that “nothing prepared civil society for the kind of setback that is undergoing since the new government took office in January 2019.”

Cutbacks in education, the consequences of the labor reform, the increase of child labor and social inequality, and threats to environmental protection systems are topics addressed in the text. “Not only Jair Bolsonaro, his cabinet and allies are feeding the anti-rightist and antidemocratic discourses that elected him, but also the path to the destruction of human rights achieved through mobilization and engagement with civil society,” the report warns. Read the text in English here.

Inesc also contributed to a detailed analysis by Cleo Manhas, policy adviser, on the educational goal (SDG 4), which reveals how the Constitutional Amendment, known as “the Ceiling of Expenditure” (CA 95), left a lot of children out of school, mainly in the most vulnerable regions. Available in English here.

“The new government, despite its previous commitment, will not submit a National Voluntary Report on this HLPF, which makes this effort of civil society organizations even more relevant,” said Iara Pietricovisky. “Now, in addition to the lack of funding to achieve internationally agreed goals, we are facing an even greater problem: the destruction of our institutions,” he concluded. The co-director of Inesc will participate in other agendas of the Forum to contribute to the analysis and monitoring of SDGs also representing Forus International and Abong.

About the 2030 Agenda

In 2015, Heads of States, including Brazil, meeting at United Nations Headquarters, decided on the adoption of the 2030 Agenda, with 17 Sustainable Development Goals, in 169 targets, aimed at the eradication of extreme poverty, the fight against inequality and the injustice and containment of climate change.

About the Spotlight Report

The Spotlight Report is published by the Arab NGO Network for Development (ANND), Center for Economic and Social Rights (CESR), Development Alternatives Development Alternatives with Women for a New Era (DAWN), Global Policy Forum (GPF), Public Services International (PSI), Social Watch, Society for International Development (SID), and Third World Network (TWN), supported by the Friedrich Ebert Stiftung.

It was presented in New York at the HLPF side event titled “How can ODS thrive in adverse political contexts?”

You will find the report here: https://www.2030spotlight.org/en

In 2018, the International Budget Partnership (IBP) set out to learn more about budget credibility – the degree to which governments implement their budgets. Budget credibility challenges arise all over the world, in a wide range of sectors and programs. This report summarizes budget credibility research undertaken in partnership with 24 civil society organizations in 23 countries between October 2018 and January 2019. Each partner organization identified a budget credibility challenge in their country and scrutinized a case where the government consistently failed to raise or spend funds as it said it would at the start of the fiscal year. Partners looked for explanations for deviations in published documents and then sought interviews with public officials to further understand the deviations.

The example from Brazil,  explanation of underspending on women’s programs, was the subject of investigation by INESC.

Brazil recently had significant success in implementing measures to fight hunger and poverty and to improve the population’s overall living conditions. These measures were enabled by growing public investments in health, education, social welfare, agrarian development, and the labor market, among others. The GDP share of federal spending on social programs, for example, grew from 13.4% in 2005 to 15.7% in 2015. During those 10 years, there was intense participation by social organizations and movements in the drafting of public policy guidelines and objectives that took place in councils, commissions, conferences, consultations, and public hearings, as well as other mechanisms.

Expanding the coverage of public policies combined with the intensification of social participation contributed to a more than 60% drop in extreme poverty from 2004-2014. During that decade, income inequality fell by 10%, with the Gini Index moving from 0.570 to 0.515. The fall in inequality would have been even greater in recent years, but for Brazil’s extremely regressive tax system.

Things have drastically changed since 2015, when victories in redistribution quickly began to “melt into air” with the adoption of severe austerity measures to reverse the public deficit. The government also took initiatives to privatize public goods and services, deregulate the labor market, and boost fiscal incentives. One of the most drastic federal cost-cutting measures was the 2016 adoption of a constitutional amendment that froze public spending, in real terms, for 20 years. And additional budget cuts at the state and municipal levels undermined public services even further.

By spending less, the government and the National Congress made living conditions more precarious for millions of Brazilians. As a result, we have seen greater rates of unemployment, infant mortality, poverty, inequalities, homicides, and deforestation, among other social and environmental woes. The decline in public safety for millions of Brazilians, along with profound shortcomings felt by people in terms of representation, leadership, and the overall legitimacy of the political system, exacerbated their irritation and anti-system feelings to the point of electing a far-right government in 2018.

These same concerns have now intensified, as the first measures announced by the Bolsonaro government – inaugurated in January 2019 – have radicalized those austerity measures, torn apart important institutions that defend the rights of indigenous peoples, blacks, women, the environment, the climate, and others, intensified privatizations, and cut off dialogue with organized civil society by shutting down the national policy councils and other participatory mechanisms. We have the strong sensation that Brazil is becoming a Yellow Thule – one of the four scenarios of the Fiscal Futures Project. In this environment – from democratic backsliding to rising poverty and inequality – gains made in fiscal transparency and accountability are under severe threat.

To try to change the current power relations in benefit of the 99% we must face the fragmentation of our struggles and the hierarchy of our agendas. A popular development perspective needs to bring together class, socioenvironmental, and identity movements that put people at the center. For that purpose, it is fundamental that we spend more energy acting within the society than disputing the State in order to build a genuine popular pact in which the State is effectively at the service of its citizens.

In the transparency and accountability field, as civil society organizations we will act in support of alternative strategies to address public deficits with less of a burden on the poor, making those who have more pay proportionately more through progressive tax reforms, increasing taxes on higher incomes, wealth, profits, and dividends. Tax exemptions, which amount to 4% of the Brazilian GDP and bring few clear benefits, must also be urgently revised. Other pressing problems we must fight include tax evasion, tax avoidance, illicit financial flows, and corruption – all of which drain billions of reais from the treasury every year.

Our immediate task is to resist. Spaces for dialogue with the Executive have all but disappeared, and we need to protect ourselves against the growing criminalization of our organizations and actions. To that end, we will adopt different strategies. We will work with politicians who are more progressive and willing to fight for fiscal transparency and accountability to avoid backslides in human rights and democracy. We will be part of litigation activities to protect human rights. We will participate in campaigns and networks that fight for improvements in fiscal transparency and accountability at the international, national, and local levels. We will intensify our capacity building work on budgets and human rights and share tools with social movements to help them fight for their rights.

To bring Brazil back to its path towards more justice and equitable development in the long term, we need to rebuild the idea of democracy that has been eroded in recent times. We are already working with progressive politicians, sensitive bureaucrats (including the executive and judiciary branches), other NGOs, the unions, and the traditional social movements like rural, urban, and women among others. We will also work with the more recent social movements – LGBTI+, traditional communities, indigenous people, youth, black communities, black women’s movements, and movements for the democratization of communication – to revisit our concepts, methods, and practices since they’ve proven to be insufficient to deal with the current reality.

One of our biggest challenges is communication. In order to grow and get other players involved in our struggle for fiscal accountability and for the progressive realization of human rights, we need to innovate in our use of information and communication technologies to promote our causes while avoiding the big companies like Google, Facebook, etc. An important first step would be to call together activists, researchers, developers, designers, statisticians, and others at hackathons and jamborees to conceive our own social networks, built and run by us, based on our values. We can create wide-ranging collaborative digital tools (a mix of apps, sites, platforms, chats, virtual working groups, interactive capacity building, etc.) for public participation on fiscal justice policies.

Times are challenging in Brazil. Uncertainty and fear are prevailing, and injustice and violence are growing. The general feeling is that we are making strides towards the abyss. For our fights to improve fiscal transparency and accountability to make sense, we need to connect them to the progressive realization of human rights and to democracy in its different dimensions – representative, participatory, and direct – more than ever.

Nathalie Beghin is Head of Policy and Carmela Zigoni is a Policy Advisor at the Institute for Socioeconomic Studies (Inesc), a Brazilian public-purpose, non-partisan, democratic and pluralist non-profit organization working to strengthen civil society and enhance social participation in public policy-making. The authors would like to thank Warren Krafchik and Paolo de Renzio from IBP for their precious comments.

Digital tools to present projects are, as expected, more in vogue than ever and gaining the attention of many funders. But some organizations recognize limitations on the usefulness of such tools when they are not adopted by the intended users and maintenance costs are too high with every update of data.  This was all explored in the Open Budget Data Exchange Workshop organized for Civil Society Organizations by the International Budget Partnership and Center Eidos of Ukraine, in which GIFT coordination team participated providing guidance and examples.

During this three-day workshop we got to know and analyze the potential and challenges of projects related to open data implemented by Center Eidos in Ukraine, INESC in Brazil, ACIJ in Argentina, Inisiatif in Indonesia and BudgIT in Nigeria. This gave way to explore the user-centered approach of designing a product that is fed through open data and the importance of advocating for publishers to provide tools that allow updating interactive platforms in an automatic way.

When we are talking about publishing open data, we always try to emphasize the importance of “publishing with purpose”. This means thinking of a higher objective than the publication per se and thinking of the intended user.  In this workshop we approached the other side of the equation, “using open data with purpose”

Digital tools to present projects are, as expected, more in vogue than ever and gaining the attention of many funders. But some organizations recognize limitations on the usefulness of such tools when they are not adopted by the intended users and maintenance costs are too high with every update of data.  This was all explored in the Open Budget Data Exchange Workshop organized for Civil Society Organizations by the International Budget Partnership and Center Eidos of Ukraine, in which GIFT coordination team participated providing guidance and examples.

During this three-day workshop we got to know and analyze the potential and challenges of projects related to open data implemented by Center Eidos in Ukraine, INESC in Brazil, ACIJ in Argentina, Inisiatif in Indonesia and BudgIT in Nigeria. This gave way to explore the user-centered approach of designing a product that is fed through open data and the importance of advocating for publishers to provide tools that allow updating interactive platforms in an automatic way.

When we are talking about publishing open data, we always try to emphasize the importance of “publishing with purpose”. This means thinking of a higher objective than the publication per se and thinking of the intended user.  In this workshop we approached the other side of the equation, “using open data with purpose”