Climate justice: framing a new discourse in Brazil

In this article, we evaluate to what extent the Climate Justice discourse has been associated by the press to extreme climate events in Brazil. The text is based on the examination of articles published by important newspapers in Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo, after two major rain events which produced floods and landslides in these two cities. Based on these findings, we suggest that the adoption of the Climate Change discourse in Brazil could produce three main positive outcomes: improve the discourse's acceptance in the international arena, increase the chances that the claims of affected groups are heard by Brazilian government, and turn current policies designed to correct effects of extreme climate events into structural policies designed to reduce vulnerability and to adapt to Climate Change.