A cooperação brasileira na América do Sul em matéria energética: o acesso à energia como um direito fundamental

Abstract

Considering the current historical and sociocultural context, it is understood that energy availability is a fundamental right, which can only be achieved through energy cooperation (EC) between countries, states and citys, with this association being understood through the search for economic and social development of the societies that participate in it. This work aims to empirically verify the profile of Brazil's bilateral and multilateral cooperation with South American countries in energy, discussing how it can act as a tool of contemporary international law, enabling access to energy as a fundamental right. Initially, the work reviews the specialized literature on energy matters, built from a bibliographical research that provided the theoretical basis for the documentary research. The empirical part of the investigation was carried out on the Concórdia platform of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, from where all international treaties between Brazil and others independent South American states were obtained. As a result, 368 international treaties were obtained, of which 322 were in force in 2023, when the research was carried out. From the quantitative analysis of these treaties, the occurrence of structuring cooperation in energy matters was verified, due to the quantity and homogeneity in the South American region of the thematic institutional strengthening regime in the energy sector. Furthermore, in relation to the content and qualitative analysis of the agreements, the presence of a formal and material horizontality of energy cooperation in South America was identified. This happened because due to the presence of the search for sustainability in the documents, the division of similar magnitude, the separation of financial charges, the presence of consultation mechanisms and the possibility of triangulation of action. This result is in line with what was found in the quantitative assessment, given the high amount of institutional strengthening as a vector of the South American EC. However, among the main adversities, there was an extensive lack of information within international treaties, in which of the 83 agreements qualitatively analyzed, only 15 of them had the basic data to carry out the complete assessment. Finally, regarding the operationalization of the signed treaties, it was evident that, in the quantitative analysis, more than half of them were integrated into the political frameworks, whereas, in the qualitative analysis, practically half of the agreements did not present data on any form of evaluation of the activities and, when there was this information, it was more focused on evaluation (less operational) and very little on monitoring (more operational). In this way, it is understood that, in the more social environment, there is still a lack of implementation of the actions proposed in these treaties, and that, even today, greater investment is necessary and, consequently, a greater cooperative relationship in this subcontinent.