Analysis: Launched for Europeans to see, Lula’s environmental management promises hesitation in Brazil

Lula’s hesitation about nominating him for the command of the Ministry of the Environment speaks louder about the country’s environmental challenges next year than the speech made at the UN climate COP27, in Egypt, when the president-elect announced to the world that prioritize the climate agenda in his government.

While he guaranteed control of key portfolios for his administration, as was the case with Social Development, Lula considered accommodating an ally with no track record in the area in the Environment —Simone Tebet, now appointed to Planning. Common in politics, but recent in environmental agencies, the offer is at the origin of the precariousness of the agenda and the opening of the herds.

It was this kind of political move that created the anti-Minister of the Environment, Ricardo Salles. The lawyer then affiliated with the PP debuted in the environmental area as state secretary for the environment of São Paulo, in 2016. He was appointed by Governor Geraldo Alckmin a week after the Progressistas had joined the PSDB candidate, João Doria, in the campaign for mayor of São Paulo. capital.

“To contain deforestation rates, a person with a strong environmental agenda and determination must lead the Ministry of the Environment,” he told the Sheet MEP Anna Cavazzini.

Vice-president of the delegation for relations with Brazil in the European Parliament, she defends the renegotiation of the trade agreement between the European Union and Mercosur to strengthen environmental guarantees.

Cavazzini awaits signs of implementation of the environmental policy in Brazil. In addition to recovering what was dismantled under Bolsonaro, she cites concerns about the release of agricultural pesticides — something the European bloc seeks to ban.

The use of the climate agenda as a springboard for international protagonism will imply Lula picking up political fights at home — and avoiding raffling off environmental bodies.

“I’m going to do everything. The Environment depends on Agriculture and Agriculture depends on the Environment, so you can rest assured”, Lula limited himself to telling the Sheetstill in the corridors of COP27, when asked about how he would equate the command of the two folders.

If Lula wants the world to believe in the speech given to COP27 —when he said that agricultural production without environmental balance should be considered a past action— his government will need to take the gamble in front of political allies. However, most of them have anti-environmental priorities.

According to the index of the Institute for Democracy and Sustainability, the anti-environmental group may have 61% of the votes in the Chamber of Deputies, considering here the parties that voted against environmental protection in at least three quarters of the matters in the last legislature.

When aiming for 2023, the Lula administration will still have the challenge of bringing diplomatic discourse —made “for Europeans to see”— closer to the priorities of Brazilians.

This means going beyond the reversal of the level of deforestation in the Amazon, whose rates are monitored around the world, after all, they indicate what the planetary capacity will be to contain global warming.

Across Brazil, the challenge is another: adapting to climate change. Here you can already feel the effects of extreme weather events in cities, forests and countryside. According to a survey by ITS/Ipec published in March, 75% of Brazilians say that global warming could harm their families.

In cities across the country, heavy rains and flooding directly threaten people’s lives, while agribusiness loses crops due to weather extremes such as excessive rainfall or prolonged droughts. From 2020 to 2021, compensation paid in rural insurance to Brazilian producers increased by 94%, according to data from CNSeg, the National Insurance Confederation.

Water is a thermometer of environmental and climate crises. Impacted by several vectors, such as deforestation, pesticides, mining and industrial use, the deregulation of hydrological regimes implies a shortage of water and electricity, with chain effects for the economy and the whole life of the country.

Cradle of waters, the cerrado, which is home to the springs of 8 of the 12 main Brazilian river basins, is undergoing rapid deforestation. Only this year there were more than 10 thousand km^twoaccording to Prodes/Inpe.

Despite the potential to guarantee climate resilience to the country —an inexorable condition for development in times of climate crisis—, the fate of the biome is threatened by the uncontrolled advance of export-oriented monocultures, such as soy and corn, mainly in the Matopiba region, between the borders of the states of Maranhão, Tocantins, Piauí and Bahia.

In western Bahia, a study by Imaterra showed that the state government has been granting irregular licenses to agribusiness for deforestation even in areas protected by law, as part of a state policy. For eight years, Bahia has been governed by Rui Costa (PT), Lula’s future Chief of Staff.

To carry out a new environmental governance in 2023, the elected government will need to politically reposition the environmental limits. Instead of appearing at one pole of the dichotomy that opposes environmental protection to development, environmental constraints need to enter as a common denominator in the equation of economic, political and international pressures.

Next year is crucial to define the country’s ability to make a shift towards climate-resilient development, which will only be possible if the country meets the Paris Agreement goal of zeroing deforestation by the end of the decade. With increasingly tighter environmental deadlines, Brazil has little time between hesitation and success.

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