An Overview of Environmental Policies for Mitigation and Adaptation to Climate Change and Application of Multilevel Regression Analysis to Investigate the CO2 Emissions over the Years of 1970 to 2018 in All Brazilian States

Abstract

Background: Brazil, one of the largest greenhouse gas emitting countries in the world, emitted approximately 2 billion gigatonnes of carbon dioxide (CO2) in 2018. This data is practically the same recorded in the previous year, suggesting that the country’s trajectory of CO2 emissions is stabilized. Methods: This study presents an overview of environmental protection and climate change mitigation policies adopted in Brazil, as well as makes use the multilevel regression modeling technique to investigate the relationship between economic activities variables in relation to CO2 emissions over the years of 1970 to 2018 in all Brazilian states. Results: The results show that the CO2 emissions in the states have the same behavior as the timeline of the change in land use. Conclusions: The public policies and actions by society and the private sector were fundamental to the reduction verified from the year of 2004 that followed until 2010, both in CO2 emissions and in the change in land use and forests. As of this year, there has been a trend towards stability in CO2 emissions. Another important characteristic is that even with a drop in the number of deforestation, the production variables continued to grow, which shows that there may be an increase in production activities, while there is a reduction in deforestation and in CO2 emissions.