The BRICS group will invite six countries — Argentina, Egypt, Iran, Ethiopia, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates — to join, reports Reuters. (See yesterday’s post, and Tuesday’s.)
The decision to expand and the choices of countries are a victory for China, which seeks to rival G7, reports the Financial Times. Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva had advocated strongly for Argentina’s inclusion. (See yesterday’s post.)
Dilma Rousseff, who heads the BRICS New Development Bank, welcomed the new members and emphasized the need to carry out “a new global financial architecture.” (Ámbito)
Iran’s “admission to the bloc was seen as a sign that Russia and China had effectively advocated for its inclusion, bolstering the anti-Western bent of BRICS,” reports the New York Times. India and Brazil have reservations about the growing anti-U.S. agenda, reports the Washington Post.
Nonetheless, “despite differences, BRICS leaders expressed a common belief that the international system was dominated by western states and institutions and was not serving the interests of developing nations,” reports the Guardian.
More Regional Relations
The U.S. “is in talks with Venezuela to explore a temporary lifting of crippling sanctions in exchange for allowing fair elections next year,” reports Bloomberg. “The preliminary discussions involve senior officials from both nations, including Venezuela’s head of congress Jorge Rodríguez.”
The Brookings Institution analyzes relations between Brazil and the U.S., arguing that the former must “update its strategy of strategic autonomy,” while “If Washington wants a closer relationship with Brazil, it will have to eschew any aspiration for pulling Brazil into an anti-China coalition, and recognize that an autonomous Brazil — one that makes meaningful contributions to regional security, climate change, and global food security — can help advance a stable international order.”
“Brazil’s government has proposed a plan to Argentina that would use yuan to guarantee export payments in order to bypass its neighboring nation’s serious cash shortages and keep trade flowing,” reports Bloomberg.
Brazil
The Brazilian Senate's Agriculture Committee approved a bill that would rule out recognition of Indigenous lands if they were not lived on by 1988. Minister of Indigenous Peoples Sonia Guajajara said the farm lobby is rushing the bill through Congress before the country's Supreme Court can rule whether the 1988 cut-off date violates a constitutional guarantee of Indigenous rights to their ancestral lands. (Reuters)
Annual emissions from the Amazon rainforest roughly doubled in 2019 and 2020 — under Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro who systematically dismantled and undermined environmental protections — according to a new study published in Nature. (Guardian)
Ecuador
Ecuadorean voters unequivocally voted to stop extracting oil from the Yasuní national park, protecting an important Amazon biodiversity hotspot. “This is the most decisive democratic victory against the fossil fuel industry in Latin America and, arguably, the world,” writes Jonathan Watts in the Guardian.
The result of activism by civil society groups, it will likely inspire climate activists elsewhere. “But arguably the greatest lesson from the referendum is for other governments, which have just been given a glaring example of the cost of stranded assets when the social mandate for fossil fuels is suddenly removed.” (Guardian)
Venezuela
“Venezuelan military officials claim to have “voluntarily evacuated” thousands of miners from Amazonas state’s Yapacana National Park in an eye-catching but opaque operation that critics say has had little impact on the area’s gold mining economy and the armed groups that profit from it,” reports InSight Crime.
Colombia
Colombia's Minister of Environment, Susana Muhamad said that the country's existing institutions, designed decades ago, are ill-equipped to tackle the current climate crisis and must be reformed. (El País)
Ecuador
“Despite the extreme violence currently plaguing Ecuador, both candidates head into the second round on platforms that reject the use of military force as the solution to the problem, instead favoring social measures,” reports InSight Crime.
Regional
Tropical Storm Franklin drenched the island of Hispaniola, home to Haiti and the Dominican Republic, and was on a path to strengthen into a powerful hurricane by the weekend, reports the Miami Herald.
Tropical Storm Franklin caused rain and landslides killed at least one person in Dominican Republic, and left hundreds of thousands of homes without power or potable water. (New York Times, Associated Press, Reuters)