Could the 2014 World Cup, the Rio 2016 Summer Olympics and Brazil’s climate leadership add up to transformative moments that launch us on our pathway to a sustainable future?

Four powerful sustainability trends will start converging in and around Brazil as we head into this century’s second decade:

1. Brazil’s climate leadership. With the tone of diminished expectations already set for the climate negotiations next month in Copenhagen, one bright spot appears to be the aggressive— if not audacious — commitments by Brazil to stop Amazon deforestation and curb carbon emissions 35% by 2020, (See article in Nature.)

2. Major sports advertising. The companies who spend tens to hundreds of millions of dollars to be sponsors of the World Cup and the Olympic’s will be touting their sustainability leadership to consumers and investors. (See IBM’s Smarter Planet)
3. The closing of the “critical decade”. Starting in 2005, the world’s leading scientists warned that our civilization had about ten years to stabilize greenhouse gas emissions enough to stave of the most catastrophic impacts of global temperature rise.
4. The eyes of the world. Up to 70% of the world’s population may be tuning in on radio, TV, online or their smartphones. Not since Babel have we had a chance to engage in a global conversation about shared responsibilities and opportunities.

Short of an alien craft landing on the White House lawn, Brazil’s command of the world’s sports stage may be humankind’s best chance to get in sync on how to create a flourishing future for our species and the planet.

For that to happen, there is some business to de-usualize.

First and foremost, Brazil has to turn talk into measured action. In just a few weeks time, before Brazil’s delegation heads off to Copenhagen, governors or their representatives from 18 states, the mayor of Rio, Brazil’s energy minister and auto, petro and airline executives will begin to construct an integrated strategy for sustainable jobs, food, fuel and rainforests. Catalyzed by Sustainable BioBrazil (a Brazilian NGO with whom we work), the policy roundtable is the first of three planned meetings in Sao Luis, Maranhao between now and April, 2010. During this time, participants will wrestle with intertwined challenges of creating new economic opportunities to lure people away from Amazon-destroying livelihoods, finding the right formula and market for avoided deforestation credits, experimenting with intercropping of food and fuel together on Brazil’s extensive but underutilized agricultural lands, and trying to sharpen the thinking about indirect land-use and carbon life cycle calculations that will determine how open world markets will be to Brazilian biofuels and food exports — upon which the majority of jobs for displaced Amazon ranchers, loggers and charcoal makers will depend.

And if the Brazil Convergence is going to fire a global transformation, the media and cultural power of both the World Cup and Rio’s Olympiad are going to have to be more explicitly devoted to telling the stories of progress and possibility. Brazil’s own stories, of course, but also stories of challenges and solutions from the hundreds of nations represented at these events. Organizers have an opportunity to shift their thinking about what makes their event “green”. Merely reducing the environmental impact of the operations (aka event sustainability) is necessary but not sufficient. They should unleash their iconic power to inspire all the people they reach to take action. During the month-long World Cup and Olympic fortnight, advertisers and their brilliant agency storytellers can craft compelling meta-narratives about the technologies and decisions that are moving our civilization forward. This way, 2014 and 2016 can provide global audiences with mileposts of progress that surely must come.

Finally, there is the distinct possibility that by 2014, nearly every aspect of the process of getting to or watching the games will have a carbon number or sustainability index attached to it. Fuel at the pump will have a carbon-rating, and the backstory of how new technologies and efficiencies lowered that number. TVs will show how much energy they are using, from what sources, with what kind of impact. Labels on official beers will feature certifications for energy and water used in their making and boast about their recycling prowess. Airlines flying to Rio and World Cup host cities will use seatback videos to talk about the percentage of sustainable biofuel in their plane’s tanks and the millions of hectares of Amazon they, their industry partners and the flying public are protecting as carbon sinks and bioresources for the planet.

While we watch for progress on these fronts at the Vancouver, London, Sochi Olympics and next summer’s South African World Cup, indications are its going to be up to you, Brazil, Brazil.