Can Brazil become a global leader in fighting climate change?

Marcio Santilli, a founding partner of the Socio-environmental Institute in São Paulo, told the news site that “without the Amazon, it impossible to keep alive the goal of limiting global warming to 1.5C above pre-industrial levels”.

Is Lula’s return good news for the planet?

Lula’s election victory “may be the turning point that environmentalists have been hoping for”, said NB News Science correspondent Denise Chow. 

During his first two terms in office, between 2003 and 2010, Lula “instituted so-called command-and-control policies that used regulations and better monitoring to decrease deforestation”, Chow reported.

According to London-based think-tank Chatham House, “the rate of deforestation systematically decreased by 70%” between 2004 to 2012 as these policies were implemented.

Lula’s environmental record is by no means perfect, however. During his last premiership, he “backed the massive Belo Monte hydroelectric dam in the Amazon, which destroyed river habitats and displaced indigenous people”, said Reuters’s Spring. Deforestation also “began to creep up again under his hand-picked successor”, Dilma Rousseff, who weakened some environmental policies in order to boost economic development.

And while Lula is now promising to restore his country’s environmental agencies to their former strength, “with Brazil’s government facing a budget crunch, it remains unclear how he will pay for his policies”, Spring added.

The Brazilian people will be watching him closely, according to Marcio Astrini, executive secretary of the national Climate Observatory network. Astrini told the BBC that Lula needed to focus on rebuilding Brazil’s environmental agencies, unfreezing the Amazon Fund – a rainforest protection project halted under Bolsonaro – and tackling criminals cashing in on deforestation. 

“When the government is succeeding, we will support them, but if it fails, we will criticise them,” Astrini said.

Lula is also likely to face significant political hurdles in enacting his promised environmental policies and reversing those of his predecessor, said Magnani on Al Jazeera.

“With 247 pro-Bolsonaro parliamentarians elected” during the 2022 elections, “Congress will be a challenge”, she wrote, “especially as the chamber uses the final days of the current government to fast-track pending bills set to hinder the demarcation of Indigenous lands and allow mining activities”.

Article source: https://www.theweek.co.uk/news/environment/958545/can-brazil-emerge-as-a-global-leader-in-the-fight-against-climate-change