Thirty years after Rio-92, Brazil loses environmental protagonism

Thirty years ago this month, Rio de Janeiro became closely associated with concerted international efforts to address climate change when it hosted the UN Conference on Environment and Development, also known as the Earth Summit or Rio-92.

Former U.S. Senator and Secretary of State John Kerry, who attended Rio-92, celebrated the initiative of then-U.S. President George H. W. Bush in pushing for such a meeting. 

“Twenty years ago this month,” Mr. Kerry remarked in 2012, “a Republican president of the U.S. helped bring together all the world’s largest economies in Rio to confront the issue of global climate change. The president was unequivocal about the mission. George Herbert Walker Bush said simply, ‘The U.S. fully intends to be the world’s preeminent leader in protecting the global environment.’” 

Mr. Kerry would go on to lament the failure of world governments to sufficiently contain the use of fossil fuels since then.

But Rio-92 is not primarily a story about the U.S. Rather, the conference is best remembered as a turning point in Brazil’s international standing on environmental matters. 

Rio-92 turned Brazil’s clean-energy efforts into a major public diplomacy boost for Latin America’s largest nation, a country with the world’s...