Lula taps Amazon defender for environment minister
Both attended the recent U.N. climate conference in Egypt, where Lula promised cheering crowds “zero deforestation” in the Amazon, the world’s largest rain forest and a key to fighting climate change, by 2030. “There will be no climate security if the Amazon isn’t protected,” he said.
Silva told the news network Globo TV shortly after the announcement that the name of the ministry she will lead will be changed to the Ministry of Environment and Climate Change.
Many agribusiness players and associated lawmakers resent Silva. That stems from her time as environment minister during most of Lula’s prior presidency, from 2003 to 2010.
Lula also named Sonia Guajajara, an Indigenous woman, as Brazil’s first minister of Indigenous peoples, and Carlos Fávaro, a soybean producer, as agriculture minister.
Silva was born in the Amazon and worked as a rubber tapper as an adolescent. As environment minister she oversaw the creation of dozens of conservation areas and a sophisticated strategy against deforestation with major operations against environmental criminals and new satellite surveillance. She also helped design the largest international effort to preserve the rain forest, the mostly Norway-backed Amazon Fund. Deforestation dropped dramatically.
But Lula and Silva fell out as he began catering to farmers during his second term and Silva resigned in 2008.
Lula appears to have convinced her that he has changed tack, and she joined his campaign after he embraced her proposals for preservation.
“Brazil will return to the protagonist role it previously had when it comes to climate, to biodiversity,” Silva told reporters during her own appearance at the United Nations summit.
This would be a sharp turnabout from the policies of the outgoing president, Jair Bolsonaro, who pushed for development in the Amazon and whose environment minister resigned after national police began investigating whether he was aiding the export of illegally cut timber.
Bolsonaro froze the creation of protected areas, weakened environmental agencies and placed forest management under control of the agriculture ministry. He also championed agribusiness, which opposes the creation of protected areas such as Indigenous territories and pushes for the legalization of land grabbing. Deforestation in Brazil’s Amazon reached a 15-year high in the year ending in July 2021, though the devastation slowed somewhat in the following 12 months.
In Egypt, Lula committed to prosecuting all crimes in the forest, including illegal logging and mining. He also said he would press rich countries to make good on promises to help developing nations adapt to climate change. And he pledged to work with other nations home to large tropical forests — Republic of Congo and Indonesia — in what could be coordinated negotiating positions on forest management and biodiversity protection. As environment minister, Silva would be charged with carrying out much of that agenda.
Silva is also likely to face resistance from Congress, where the farm caucus next year will account for more than one-third of the Lower House and Senate.
Two lawmakers allied with Lula who come from the nation’s agriculture sector told the Associated Press before the announcements that they disagree with Silva’s nomination given the conflict of her prior tenure.
Others were more hopeful. Neri Geller, a lawmaker of the agribusiness caucus who acted as a bridge to Lula during the campaign, said things had changed since Silva’s departure in 2008.
“At the time, Marina Silva was perhaps a little too extremist, but people from the agro sector also had some extremists,” he said, also citing a strengthened legal framework around environmental protection. “I think she matured and we matured. We can make progress on important agenda items for the sector while preserving [the environment] at the same time.”
