In a country with 27 state governments, more than 5,000 city halls, and around 12 million people working in the public sector, calls to reform — or improve — Brazil’s civil service never really seem to go away.

We talked to Brazil's special secretary for state transformation — and asked him to compare the reform proposals coming from the lower house with the Lula administration's approach. 

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Carlos Nobre, head of the Planetary Science Pavilion at COP30 in the Amazon, talks to us about the conference’s results, the climate emergency we are living through, and what Brazil can still do.

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Five years ago, Brazil launched a public digital payment infrastructure — and its impact on the financial market and society has been immense.

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Over the past decade, Brazilian lawmakers have steadily built up procedures to expand their powers over the purse. That has included increasing the overall volume of congressional grants; making a large share of them mandatory spending; limiting the Executive’s discretion over when to release those funds, and creating ways to erase transparency and traceability from the process. A perfect recipe for corruption, which has now trickled down to state and municipal levels.

But the Supreme Court has just ordered the three branches of government to run a nationwide awareness campaign — from December through March — to explain how congressional grants are executed. The idea: show the public where they can access information about these amendments, teach people how to track where the money goes, and encourage them to report irregularities or wrongdoing. Will that finally be enough?

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Each passing year, the United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP) gains more urgency. More and more biomes around the world are approaching what scientists call tipping points — the Amazon chief among them. Hosting the 30th edition of COP in Belém, one of the Amazon’s biggest cities, therefore represents one of the most significant responsibilities Brazil’s diplomacy has taken on in recent times. 

This week, we are joined by experts with distinct and diverse backgrounds to discuss the climate challenges facing Brazil and the world ahead of COP30. They are:

• Adriana Ramos: Executive Secretary of the Socio-Environmental Institute, a civil society organization that monitors indigenous lands and other environmentally protected areas across Brazil, working both with governments and on the ground. She represented the Brazilian Forum of NGOs on the Amazon Fund Steering Committee from 2008 to 2013 and served on the Executive Board of the Brazilian Association of NGOs.
• Carlos Nobre: One of the world’s leading climatologists, he is a researcher at the University of São Paulo, co-chair of the Scientific Panel for the Amazon, and a member of academies such as the World Academy of Sciences. He co-authored the research that earned the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change the Nobel Peace Prize in 2007 and was also responsible for creating some of Brazil’s main government climate centers, as well as the Large-Scale Biosphere-Atmosphere Experiment in the Amazon. 
• Natalie Unterstell: President of the Talanoa Institute, a Brazilian climate policy think tank, and member of the COP30 Adaptation Council and the accreditation panel of the Green Climate Fund. She holds a master’s degree from Harvard Kennedy School and has served as a negotiator for Brazil in global climate talks, helping lead Brazil’s climate policy development.

Listen to the full episode on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or on The Brazilian Report.

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Justice Luís Roberto Barroso is retiring. We unpack how factors such as trust, political ties, and electoral considerations may guide President Lula’s next choice for the court. 

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Justice Luís Roberto Barroso is retiring. We unpack how factors such as trust, political ties, and electoral considerations may guide President Lula’s next choice for the court. 

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President Lula’s popularity has risen. We examine how this might impact the political landscape ahead of the next presidential election. 

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President Lula’s popularity has risen. We examine how this might impact the political landscape ahead of the next presidential election. 

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Brazil’s Congress is discussing a proposal for income tax reform. Backed by the Lula administration, the bill seeks to make the country’s system more progressive. But just how unequal are taxes in Brazil? 

This week, we host economist Davi Bhering, who co-authored a Paris School of Economics study on Brazil’s tax income system. In our newly released episode of the Explaining Brazil podcast, he unpacks:  

• Why Brazil’s income inequality may be higher than previously estimated.
• How the Brazilian system’s regressivity compares to other countries.

Why his findings may indicate that global inequality is higher than anticipated.

Listen to the full episode on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or on The Brazilian Report.

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