Discuss a Popular or Literary Representation of Your Country Case Study

I choose Brazil as my country of choice, and I will use it as my case study to analyze about the National Strategies for Sustainable development. I obtained the information primarily from the Website. The case study has been made publicly available to add knowledge based on the national sustainable development in Brazil.

Is your time best spent reading someone else’s essay? Get a 100% original essay FROM A CERTIFIED WRITER!

Order now

Brazil is considered among the top 5 largest countries in the world. It is located in Eastern South America. It has a population of about 170million people. It is known to be a country of contrast in that, besides having the two largest cities in the southern hemisphere which are Sao Paulo and Rio de Janeiro, it also has Amazon and Pantanal as the largest remaining tropical forest in the world and most speculative wetland systems respectively. In its social realities, contrasts are also evident, because despite Brazil being the largest natural resource reserves, many of its citizens still suffer from poverty, inequality, and many other social problems.

Brazil is categorized as the ninth largest economy in the world due to its exploitation of the vast resources with a large pool of labor that has helped the country to create its strong economic position. It has however faced several economic challenges. Brazil is in the race to continue fighting inflation, which is an economic response to various developments which arise in making the efforts to overcome Brazils large deficits. There is also income inequality where about 10% can control their income, and 8% of the populations are not able to control their income (Telles, 2014). Brazil, however, hides the fact that most of its citizens are the poorest with only a few regarded as being rich.

Brazil was under the military rule for two decades until 1985 when it went back to civilian rule (Ashcroft et al. 2013). It is a federative republic with three levels of government, federal, state and municipal government. The president is usually the Chief of State and the head of the government. Brazil faces a lot of social challenges, of which most are the inequality in income distribution, poor quality of education, poor health status and most of the citizens being denied the right of participating in decision making. The official language of Brazil is Portuguese. It is ranked as number 5 in the human poverty index in the 2001 ranking.

Brazil is within a surface area of about 8.5 million square kilometers, and its terrain is covered by the Amazon Basin and the central highlands, although there desert areas, rolling plains, and some hills. The climate is mostly tropical with temperate in the South. The country is easily affected by extreme weather conditions such as droughts and floods. The Amazon covers the largest biodiversity in the world and covers about 40% of Brazil. The primary environmental problem in Brazil is deforestation in the Amazon and the Atlantic Forest, there is also air pollution, waste, and sewage disposal, and water and coastline problems. There in need to overcome these environmental problems and to do this it requires a year of diligent and consistent work which can only be acquired in the long-term rather than a short-term (Dubey, et al., 2017). However, several problems that hinder Brazils effort in eliminating the environmental problems and these include; the main focus and priority are on economic stabilization policies at the cost of other priorities such as establishing environmental initiatives.

National Sustainable Development Strategy

The Brazilian president has signed the Brazilian Agenda in preparation for the World Summit on Sustainable development. The strategy was not included in the official government document, but it had been created through several years of lengthy consultation across all the sectors of the society, and it is therefore classified as a social pact.

The Agenda provides an extensive overview of how the development process of the strategy, acknowledgment of challenges and lesson learned from various actors are involved. It expands upon the concept of sustainable development, and how the Brazil situation fits in the international context. The agenda outlines several objectives which include the actions and recommendations. In the final component of the agenda is the discussion on implementation programs and instruments to coordinate the strategic process.

One of the main programs that are under the Brazilian constitution is the program to receive funding. It was hoped that by including these themes in the national planning that it will finally be included in the public policies. Another plan is the inclusion of environmental initiatives on the Nation Development Strategy. Other initiative plans include social, economic, regional and democratic initiatives.

Brazil also has a major participant with other American countries on a variety of sustainable development dimensions such as the Latin American and Caribbean Initiative and also the Presidential Statement which was presented by the presidents of South America regarding the World Summit on Sustainable Development.

Although there appears the need to reduce poverty and other inequalities, Brazil did not have a clear National Poverty Reduction Strategy. It has however developed a close substitute to that strategy which aims mainly in compensatory policies, like the distribution of free goods to the poor people affected by adverse problems; and it has also formed partnerships between the government and the civil society associations and private sectors organizations which sponsor or support affected communities.

By comparing the above information with the notes I read about Brazil on the website of Ministry of Environment, I conclude that the information from the websites and what is in the textbooks is true about the country and according to my research I justify the information accurate.

References

Ashcroft, B., Griffiths, G., & Tiffin, H. (2013). Post-colonial studies: The key concepts. Routledge.

Dubey, R., Gunasekaran, A., Helo, P., Papadopoulos, T., Childe, S. J., & Sahay, B. S. (2017). Explaining the impact of reconfigurable manufacturing systems on environmental performance: The role of top management and organizational culture. Journal of Cleaner Production, 141, 56-66.

Telles, E. E. (2014). Race in another America: The significance of skin color in Brazil. Princeton University Press.