When voters in Brazil reelected President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva Sunday, they didn’t simply protect their democracy from the aspiring-strongman son-of-a-strongman Flávio Bolsonaro. They also gave the Amazon rainforest a fighting chance at continued survival, an environmental win with global implications. Quite simply, the Amazon is a vital engine of biodiversity that serves as one of nature’s most significant buffers against climate change.
Brazil is home to about 60 percent of the Amazon rainforest, which has already lost as much as 20 percent of its total area to deforestation, much of it driven by converting forest into pastures for cattle. (That’s the kernel of truth behind rightwing panicmongering about climate activists who supposedly want to take away your Big Macs.)
Lula’s predecessor, Jair Bolsonaro — Flávio’s father — rapidly increased deforestation by slashing environmental regulations and just plain not enforcing those that remained. Bolsonaro encouraged clear-cutting for agriculture, roads, mining, and oil exploration, eliminated funding for federal agencies with jurisdiction over the forests, looked the other way at illegal resource extraction operations, and actively suppressed indigenous and environmental groups. In 2019, his first year in office, deforestation in Brazil shot to the highest levels observed since satellites have measured it.
On top of Bolsonaro’s deliberate actions, vast swaths of the rainforest were also hit by wildfires in 2019. Bolsonaro shifted the blame to his political enemies, climate scientists, meddling international NGOs, and of course France. Like his big fan Donald Trump, Bolsonaro insisted that his country would become prosperous if only rich people ran things. Into the ground if necessary.
In the four years since Lula returned to the presidency in 2022, Carbon Brief estimates that at least 20,000 square kilometers of rainforests have been saved, compared to computer models of likely deforestation if Bolsonaro’s policies had continued. Deforestation fell to its lowest level in over a decade.
Flávio Bolsonaro, like his father, has said that he doesn’t think human activity causes climate change, and said during the campaign that “the biggest way to address the subject of environmental issues is what we did” during his daddy’s regime. Hey, killing the environment is one way to “address” it.
Lula’s narrow win is huge for the rainforest, its biosphere, and the indigenous people who live there. And, you know, the rest of the friggin’ planet and the life on it. It’s also a very tenuous victory, because much more needs to be done. Yeah, we do always say that. But to put it simply, the rainforest won a reprieve, but it’s not out of the woods yet.
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Carlos Nobre, a climate and sustainability professor at the University of São Paulo, summed up the significance of Lula’s win in very stark terms, saying that Lula “will have four more years to save the Amazon,” and adding that had he lost, “it would have been ecocide.” That’s a bad thing.
Nobre was among the first climate scientists to warn that continued deforestation of the Amazon basin, combined with higher global temperatures, could drive the region to a tipping point where rainfall no longer sustains the forest, and it would be replaced over time by savannah.
Days before Brazil’s election, Nobre told the Associated Press that the Amazon is already getting close to that point.
“Today, we know that the southern Amazon is particularly vulnerable,” Nobre said. “The dry season is now four to five weeks longer. Conditions are approximately 20% to 30% drier, and temperatures are two to three degrees Celsius higher.”
Lula committed in his first term to completely ending illegal deforestation by 2030, and beyond that, to regrow six million hectares (nearly 15 million acres) of the Amazon by 2030, and another 18 million hectares (44.4 million acres) by 2050. They’re ambitious goals. Lula has recommitted Brazil to its Paris Climate Agreement goals, including transitioning the country off fossil fuels. Brazil’s electric grid is already largely powered by hydroelectric dams, and wind and solar have boosted that further, with 89 percent of Brazil’s energy coming from clean sources.
Unfortunately, much of Brazil’s economy has depended on commodity exports — including all that lucrative but forest-killing beef — which aren’t great for decarbonization. A recent study by the Institute for Climate and Society and the Centre for Economic Transition Expertise at the London School of Economics makes the case that Brazil can make use of all that clean energy to develop more sustainably and maybe even equitably, by “powershoring” (gotta have a buzzword), or putting energy-intensive operations near plentiful clean energy. Green manufacturing of goods like steel could give Brazil a price advantage over regional and even European manufacturers, for instance. Several Brazilian states and the federal government are interested.
Fighting to preserve the rainforest also remains a dangerous business; while Lula’s government has restored funding for environmental protection, at least 26 people were killed in Brazil in 2025 in conflicts between small landowners and “illegal loggers, miners and cattle ranchers,” according to a report by Global Witness. Lula’s administration has recognized indigenous groups and firmed up their abilities to protect their lands, and activists are calling on the government to step up such measures.
None of this is easy. Lula will have to work with a new National Congress that’s dominated by Bolsonaro’s party, whose members are just as backward on environmental issues as Jair (who’s in prison for trying to overthrow Lula) and Flávio, who’s fled to the welcoming arms of Oildaddy Trump. And for all the planetary significance of Brazil’s rainforests, most voters in the leadup to the election were focused on other matters, like making a living and all that.
As the USA heads into elections that will help determine whether Donald Trump will continue letting Big Oil run wild, we know the feeling.
[NYT (guest link) / Inside Climate News / Carbon Brief / Reuters / National Geographic]
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<the rainforest won a reprieve, but it’s not out of the woods yet.>
If I was given only this sentence to read, I'd know the author.
I've never understand the people who don't believe humans are the primary driver of climate change. Let's say we aren't, just for arguments sake. Regardless the cause of climate change, shouldn't humans be tasked with ameliorating it, given that we're the dominant species on planet? We may not cause it (we do) but isn't it ultimately our job to find an adequate solution?
These dumb motherfuckers just never make any sense.