Magazine 29horas brings the profile Sergio Leitão, founder Instituto Escolhas

In the Sustainability special, the article brings a profile of the founder and current executive director of Escolhas, who talks about the Escolhas performance in the production of analysis and studies, which identify the economic, social and environmental costs of public and private projects. “When you bring data to a debate, you organize the axis of the discussion,” says Sergio Leitão.

 

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29 Hours Magazine – World Water Day Special

The noble mission of enriching the debate

Founded by lawyer and environmentalist Sergio Leitão, for 5 years the Instituto Escolhas has been seeking to generate studies on the subjects of economics and environment

By Andrea Vialli

Founded in 2015, Instituto Escolhas has stood out for the quality of the studies it publishes, always relating current social and environmental issues with data and economic analysis to enable the sustainable development. The organization was born from the restlessness of lawyer Sergio Leitão, one of the most prominent representatives of the social and environmental movement in Brazil, with a career built in major NGOs such as Greenpeace, Socioenvironmental Institute (ISA) and the public sector, such as the National Museum, National Indian Foundation (Funai) and Ministry of Justice.

When participating in major clashes involving the environmental movement and other forces of society, Leitão understood that there was a gap in the debate, which was precisely the production of economic analysis that could bring elements that justified issues such as the reduction of deforestation, water conservation and the transition to the low carbon economy. An example was the vote on the New Forest Code (Law No. 12,651/2012) that opposed representatives of agribusiness and environmentalism in the discussions relating to update of the law regulating forest conservation and agricultural production in the country.

“In these discussions, the agribusiness sector began to manage its information in a more skilled way, by convincing society of how relevant food production was to Brazil. This led me to question whether we environmentalists had or not limitations in the debate that would need to be overcome to deal with a new stage of the movement,” says Leitão.

For him, Brazilian society is convinced of the importance of the environment, which is reflected in the instances of care with the subject within the range of the public authorities and in companies and in the legacy that has been built since the 1988 Constitution – the basis of legislation on the subject, Conservation Units and the delimitation of Indigenous Lands. But environmentalists lacked to say what it would be like, when it would be and what the costs of this transition to sustainable development would be.

Thus, Instituto Escolhas began to act on two main fronts: in the production of analyses and studies that identify the economic, social and environmental costs of public and private projects on subjects such as energy, forests, oceans, food production and urbanization; and the promotion of scientific knowledge in the area of Economics and Environment. To play the first role, the organization brought together, in three Boards – Board of Directors, Scientific Board and Audit Committee – important names such as economists Marcos Lisboa and Bernardo Appy, political scientists Ricardo Abramovay and Ricardo Sennes and former Minister of the Environment Izabella Teixeira, among others. The studies, carried out by the Escolhas team and associated researchers, have generated high repercussions in the media and debates in Congress.

One of the most recent ones addressed the subject of water and the electric power sector, facing a scenario of shortage. The Instituto Escolhas’ team focused on the increase in conflicts over water use in the country and the need to properly price water resources, especially in a context of change in the rainfall regime that is being aggravated by the climate changes. The document presents an analysis of the basins of the São Francisco and Jaguaribe (CE) rivers and the Belo Monte Hydroelectric Power Plant and shows revealing data: the shortage of water in the São Francisco River Basin would bring a loss of R$ 2.5 billion per year for the generation of electric power, with direct consequences for the energy tariff and the consumers’ pocket. The dispute over water in the Xingu River basin in Pará would bring a loss of R$ 2 billion/year for the loss of the firm energy that would be generated in Belo Monte.

Among other topics contemplated by recent studies made by Instituto Escolhas, there are a new proposal for the economy of Amazonas, based on the bioeconomy and dynamization of the industrial park of the Free Economic Zone of Manaus; and a study on the volume of subsidies and the carbon footprint of meat production in Brazil. “When you bring data to a debate, you organize the axis of the discussion,” says Leitão.

For the second front of action, the chair of Economics and Environment was created. After one year of operation, in 2016, the founders of Instituto Escolhas confirmed their initial suspicion that there were few study centers and researchers focused on these two subjects. “We saw an isolated effort from some researchers, so the solution found was to stimulate, through scholarships for master degree and doctoral students, the scientific production in these fields”, says Leitão. Thus, the objective of the chair is to contribute to increase the number of researchers who approach the complexity of environmental issues in an objective manner. Since the launch of the program, three notices have been held that gathered 17 scholarship holders in institutions such as Fundação Getúlio Vargas, Esalq-USP, FEA-USP, UFPE, UFOP and University of Potsdam, Germany. Subscriptions for the 2020 notice ended in January.

For Leitão, the path chosen by Instituto Escolhas has been essential precisely at a time when the environmental issue has entered the center of the public debate in Brazil today, triggered by the burning in the Amazon region and the oil spill on the northeastern coast. “At a time when social and environmental issues are inserted in a war of narratives, often ideological, the role of Instituto Escolhas is to bring qualified data to the debate, and sit must continue in that direction.”

Digital version available at: http://miti.com.br/ce2/web/impresso/visualizar/3439228922?token=7PHqnwBg9LBA8W6ElcmIo-81n7YGUVf6