In 2023, Marina Silva will assume the same position in the federal government that she held between 2003 and 2008 in the face of a range of environmental problems similar to those of 20 years ago, but now with a much greater degree of complexity.
When Lula announced, in December 2002, that the Acre senator for the PT would be Minister of the Environment —the second name to be presented, right after the head of Finance, Antonio Palocci—, the newly elected president conveyed the message that the environmental agenda would have weight in the government.
Marina, then 44 years old and with a history of fighting in defense of traditional peoples against the predatory occupation of the Amazon —started with rubber tapper leader Chico Mendes—, faced deforestation in the Amazon that she classified as frightening.
In the period from August 2001 to July 2002 alone, more than 20,000 kmtwo of forest had been cut down. In the following 12 months it would be another 25 thousand kmtwo. The peak of the mandate —and the second highest value in the historical series— would be reached between August 2003 and July 2004: 27,800 kmtwo.
It was against this background that Marina and the team very quickly understood what their main delivery had to be.
“If we weren’t able to contain deforestation, it would be as if we hadn’t achieved anything else. It was our ‘Armageddon’. And one of the conclusions we reached when analyzing what had already been done is that it couldn’t be a sectorial plan, purely from Ministry of the Environment. It had to be a transversal policy”, said Marina to Sheet in October of this year.
She and her team prepared the PPCDAm (Action Plan for the Prevention and Control of Deforestation in the Legal Amazon), launched in 2004. The plan was the stepping stone that led to a consistent reduction in deforestation over the next eight years, attracting foreign investment and led to the creation of the Amazon Fund.
In 2012, during the first Dilma Rousseff administration, deforestation fell to less than 5,000 kmtwothe lowest value in the historical series —a reduction of 83% in relation to 2004. Emissions of greenhouse gases in Brazil have changed levels, and the country has taken the lead in international climate negotiations.
All a consequence of measures initiated by Marina, but at that point she had already left the government, after conflicting with a growing development agenda, led mainly by Dilma, who at the time was Minister of the Civil House.
In 2008, faced with a political situation very different from that of 2002, Marina understood that her work was “difficult due to the lack of support for environmental policy within the government itself”, which made her resign.
The justification, which appears in a video on her campaign website for the federal deputy for São Paulo this year, has always been exposed in a very transparent way by the former minister. The government had put aside concern for the environment.
Marina broke with Lula, with the PT, ran for president in 2010, 2014 and 2018 —and suffered a smear campaign precisely at the hands of the party. In the last attempt at the Presidency, in 2018, with low votes, she seemed to have reached the end of her political career.
The dismantling of the Bolsonaro government’s environmental policy, however, brought Marina and all the former Ministers of the Environment to the fore, even by way of contrast.
The resumption of relations between Lula and Marina in this year’s elections took place in this context. The president-elect sought to show that he was the opposite of Bolsonaro in this matter and placed the environmental and climate issue in the priorities, incorporating suggestions from the former minister. That was what ensured her support for the PT, who was looking for a broad front.
Despite having prioritized the issue during the campaign —borrowing precisely Marina’s prestige to secure his commitments—, Lula was slow to confirm her name for MMA.
It would have suffered pressure from the PT and the “market”, which would consider it too radical. She even offered the portfolio to Simone Tebet (MDB), a senator linked to agribusiness, but backtracked.
Marina always points out that one of the reasons for the success of the PPCDAm is its transversality, across 13 ministries, under the political coordination of the Civil House and executive of the MMA. At the base, three pillars: monitoring and environmental control; land and territorial planning; and support for sustainable productive activities.
Basically, the first two were the ones that worked the most, with intense inspection work and the fight against environmental crimes and with the creation of barriers to the advance of deforestation —the conservation units.
Twenty years later, the environmental policy is dismantled, the inspection mechanisms are weakened, and no conservation unit has been created in the Bolsonaro government. In addition, there are pressures to loosen land tenure regulation rules —which may favor land grabbers—, and environmental crime has become associated with organized crime, becoming more armed, dangerous and daring.
Marina knows that just reactivating the PPCDAm, abandoned by Bolsonaro, will not be enough. The plan should remain the basis, but will need to be updated with sustainable development policies in the region that, in practice, never worked at scale.
“Reality is completely more serious than what we had in 2003, because it has several components that intersect”, said Marina in the same interview with Sheet in October. “The reality of a government that spent four years dismantling structures — not only from the point of view of governance, but of human resources, management. The reality in which the prevailing discourse was to empower criminals, weaken environmentalists, local communities Those who committed crimes lived four years with the certainty of impunity.”
Under Bolsonaro, deforestation once again surpassed the 10,000 km barriertwo and, in four years, grew 60% compared to the previous four years. Data on fires and deforestation alerts in recent months make it clear that, in the countryside, war is on. Since August, with the prospect of a change in government, forest destruction has grown and reached the highest values for recent years.
When presenting her proposals to Lula, Marina defended the need for this agenda to be incorporated by the entire government. She knows that, without the support of agribusiness, infrastructure plans, energy expansion, she will not be able to turn the key, not only in the Amazon, but in the fight against deforestation in all biomes and the climate crisis.
20 years ago, in this Sheetcolleague Marcelo Leite wrote, when commenting on Marina’s appointment, that it was necessary to go “beyond appearances” to ensure that environmental issues carried weight in the government.
“There’s little point in having a personality there if your function is reduced to mitigating the adverse effects of development policies that are incompatible with the preservation of the Amazon —or the cerrado, the Pantanal, the Atlantic forest— designed and decided upon by Esplanada’s neighbors, without real participation. of MMA,” wrote Leite.
This premise remains true. It is worth paying attention, for example, to how the Civil House will behave, so fundamental for the PPCDAm in the 2000s, now under the baton of Rui Costa (PT).
The management of the former governor of Bahia was very permissive with the deforestation of the cerrado in the state, releasing licenses for the suppression of vegetation for the expansion of agribusiness, including on territories of traditional peoples.
It will also be interesting to see what the relationship will be like with Senator Carlos Fávaro (PSD-MT), who should take over the Ministry of Agriculture. Fávaro was the rapporteur for a project that expanded the possibilities of land regularization so much that he was nicknamed, by environmentalists, the land grabbing bill.
It remains to be seen whether the environmental priority will withstand the first clashes of interests in the sector.
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