Citizen Carbon and Living Territory

Super El Niño, FESBE 2026, carbon credits, DREX Cidadão, and territorial climate sovereignty

Before speaking about carbon, climate markets, or financial credit, we return to the territory. Temperature. Water. Smoke. Dry soil. The smell of wildfires. Lack of rain. Floods. Agricultural production. Energy. A body exhausted by heat. No climate economy exists outside the body-territory.

The climate discussion becomes even more urgent with warnings about a possible Super El Niño, capable of intensifying droughts, heat waves, wildfires, water insecurity, and economic impacts across different regions of Brazil.

In the BrainLatam2026 language, this means something simple and deep:

climate does not affect only the planet. Climate reorganizes interoception, proprioception, attention, safety, nutrition, sleep, economy, and belonging.

FESBE 2026 opens space for this conversation by bringing themes related to metabolism, environmental physiology, neurodevelopment, biological rhythms, public health, pollution, environmental inequality, and climate change.

This is where the idea of Citizen Carbon emerges.

The BrainLatam2026 thesis is:

if a territory preserves forest, water, biodiversity, and climate balance, the economic benefit of carbon credits cannot remain only with financial funds, certifiers, banks, and global speculation.

The benefit must return:

• to the territory;

• to the municipality;

• to local communities;

• and to the CPF of those who help preserve that biome.

In practice:

if a region preserves Atlantic Forest, Amazon rainforest, Cerrado, mangroves, or agroforestry systems that reduce emissions or capture carbon:

• the territory generates climate value;

• this value is certified;

• and part of it returns directly to the local citizen.

The central idea is to transform:

carbon into territorial metabolism.

Not merely into an abstract financial asset.

This connects directly with:

• DREX Cidadão;

• APUS;

• Tekoha;

• Jiwasa;

• belonging;

• climate sovereignty;

• collective Zone 2;

• regenerative economy.

Brazilian legislation has already begun to open space for this. Law No. 15,042/2024 established the Brazilian Greenhouse Gas Emissions Trading System, creating the legal basis for a regulated carbon market in Brazil.

But BrainLatam2026 proposes one step further:

carbon cannot leave the tree, become a financial derivative, and never return to the people who protected the territory.

This becomes even more important when we observe recent cases of fraudulent use and excessive financialization of climate-related assets.

Investigations involving Banco Master raised suspicions about financial operations associated with environmental assets and carbon-credit structures allegedly used in opaque, highly leveraged ways, disconnected from real territorial materiality. The case became a warning about the risk of turning sustainability into financial engineering without ecological transparency and without direct benefit to local populations.

In the BrainLatam2026 perspective, this reveals a deeper problem:

Financial Climate Coloniality

The territory produces:

• forest;

• biodiversity;

• water;

• climate stability;

• carbon capture.

But profit often rises toward:

• funds;

• banks;

• global platforms;

• financial structures far from the real biome.

Meanwhile:

• the local resident remains poor;

• young people remain without perspective;

• schools remain precarious;

• cities remain without trees;

• bodies remain in Zone 3.

The Citizen Carbon proposal reverses this logic.

A possible model:

1. The territory preserves or regenerates;

2. Carbon is audited through satellites, AI, sensors, and traceability;

3. Part of the value enters the municipality;

4. Part returns directly to the territorial CPF;

5. Resources finance:

• food;

• education;

• urban trees;

• health;

• public internet;

• water;

• climate prevention;

• collective Zone 2.

Here, APUS becomes stronger: territory stops being scenery and becomes a living economic variable.

Tekoha also becomes central: extreme heat, smoke, drought, floods, water insecurity, and pollution reorganize:

• anxiety;

• sleep;

• attention;

• HRV;

• breathing;

• cognition;

• mental health.

Climate neuroscience begins exactly there: when we understand that environmental change also modulates neurophysiological states.

Recent studies reinforce this direction. Reviews on climate change and mental health show associations between extreme climate events and increased anxiety, depression, post-traumatic stress, and psychosocial suffering.

Latin American researchers have also discussed:

• environmental racism;

• political ecology;

• body-territory;

• ecological coloniality;

• climate justice;

• social vulnerability under climate change.

This directly connects:

• climate;

• neuroscience;

• physiology;

• public policy;

• economic sovereignty.

A BrainLatam2026 experimental design could investigate:

• HRV/RMSSD;

• breathing;

• EEG;

• fNIRS;

• GSR;

• sleep quality;

• thermal perception;

• water security;

• territorial belonging;

in populations affected by:

• drought;

• extreme heat;

• floods;

• wildfire smoke;

• deforestation;

• food insecurity.

The BrainLatam2026 question would be:

how do extreme climate events reorganize tensional selves and collective neuroaffective ecology?

EEG could observe changes in attention, fatigue, vigilance, and cognitive load. fNIRS could investigate prefrontal activity associated with climate stress, decision-making, and environmental overload in more ecological and territorialized contexts.

In the end, Citizen Carbon and Living Territory is an attempt to return:

• metabolism;

• belonging;

• sovereignty;

• and economic dignity

to those who truly sustain the biomes.

Because perhaps the next frontier of democracy is not only voting.

Perhaps it is:

being economically recognized for the living territory that the body helps preserve.

Recent References Supporting This Text

1. Law No. 15,042/2024 — Brazil — establishes the Brazilian Greenhouse Gas Emissions Trading System.

2. The Lancet Regional Health – Americas (2024) — climate change, migration, food insecurity, and psychosocial impacts in Latin America.

3. Cabieses et al. (2024) — review on climate, migration, and health in Latin America, highlighting environmental and social vulnerabilities.

4. Hartinger et al. (2024) — Lancet Countdown Latin America report on climate change and health in the region.

5. Quiroga & D’Arcangelis (2023) — body-territory, decolonial feminisms, and Latin American political ecology.

6. Gay-Antaki (2025) — body-territory and decolonial climate justice.

7. Metrópoles (2025) — journalistic investigation on Banco Master financial structures and operations allegedly linked to carbon-credit schemes.

8. INPE (2026) — alerts and projections on climate impacts associated with Super El Niño in Brazil.