Analysis: With ‘mutirão’ at the COP, Lula opens Brazil’s first climate government

The rise of Egypt’s COP to the forefront of the elected government’s new diplomacy is due to two interdependent dynamics. Lula’s election ends a terrible but transformative year for climate policy.

On the one hand, the Ukrainian War gave impetus to fossil industries, which were experiencing a rare period of decline, while growing divisions between West and East, but also between the Global North and South, exacerbated the climate governance crisis.

On the other hand, the energy transition has become a matter of national security for developed countries, with extraordinary implications for diplomacy and international investment.

Then, Brazilian civil society was strengthened through the emergence of a generation of outstanding scientists, activists and politicians and the multiplication of organizations that established the relationship between democracy, climate and social justice. These changes made the metamorphosis of Lula’s third term into Brazil’s first climate government inevitable.

In Latin America, the pink wave has almost always been accompanied by a green wave. The Chilean Gabriel Boric’s climate platform was a demand of the popular protest movement, while the Colombian Gustavo Petro’s came along with the renewal of the left after the peace agreement.

The Brazilian case, however, is exceptional, because climate policy has transformed the Workers’ Party from the outside to the inside, which has the trade union and nationalist struggle for fossil energy as one of its main historical references. The PT follows the path of other center-left parties that saw climate policy as an opportunity for new alliances and programmatic reforms.

In August of this year, Joe Biden’s government was saved by climate activists who forced the Senate to pass a new economic package. Social Democrat Olaf Scholz’s coalition government depends more than ever on his deputy Robert Habeck, the leader of the Greens.

If COP27 becomes a joint effort by Brazilian leaders, it will be the stage for Lula and for the entire broad front that defeated the extreme right.

In addition to symbols and speeches, the Lula government will be evaluated for its ability to overcome the confrontation with populist movements that affects so many other democracies.

The climate policy of the government of Emmanuel Macron has never recovered from the shock caused by the yellow vests, a protest triggered by a carbon tax.

In Europe and the United States, the opportunists who spearheaded the anti-vaccination movements became exponents of protests against rising energy prices. The very movement of coup truck drivers in favor of Jair Bolsonaro is also a manifestation of Brazil’s hyperdependence on the road system and the carbon industry.

From now on, all politics are climate politics.

^{The Planeta em Transe project is supported by the Open Society Foundations.}