Finanças verdes em democracias em chamas : como as políticas financeiras climáticas podem sobreviver ao negacionismo ambiental?

Abstract

This article aims at assessing which institutional design can be more resilient to the emergence of climate denialist policies, in governments with an authoritarian tendency. It analyzes the decision-making Governance of two economic bureaucracies decisive for Brazilian climate policies—the Central Bank of Brazil (BCB) and the National Bank for Economic and Social Development (BNDES). The findings confirm the hypothesis that the bureaucracy’s administrative autonomy can play a counterweight role to climate denialist populism. The article shows that the BCB, which has had a regime of operational autonomy, has had greater resoluteness in its green prudential action, implementing new green agendas even in the Bolsonaro government—a climate denialist government. Instead, BNDES, which relies on a regime of greater decision-making freedom for the government, presented a reversal of its climate policies. However, this institutional formula has its limits: autonomous bureaucracies tend to have narrower mandates and, as a result, pursue less ambitious and transformative green policies. In other words, although the BCB has proven more resilient than the BNDES, its innovative policies are also less transformative—they are primarily prudential in nature. Ecological transformation requires broader, large-scale actions, which makes the narrow mandates typical of autonomous bureaucracies less suitable for such purposes.