Following Lula da Silva’s remarkable electoral ‘remontada’, Brazil’s forests may sigh with relief. Lula’s re-election, with 51.8% of votes in the second ballot of Brazil’s presidential elections, averts a second Bolsonaro presidency that seemed to be looming after the first round of elections in early October. It would have threatened to dismantle environmental safeguards, weaken Indigenous territorial rights and accelerate the exploitation of the Amazon. Moreover, Flávio Bolsonaro’s alignment with Donald Trump offered little prospect for a continuation of Brazil’s international leadership for ambitious climate action. The threat was concrete, grounded in both the Bolsonaro family’s track record and Flávio’s personal campaign promises. Yet Brazil’s election was hardly a referendum on forests or climate policy. While forest protection attracts international attention, living costs, corruption and security dominate domestic concerns.
Lula is no consistent environmentalist himself. His commitment to new oil exploration sits uneasily alongside his forest credentials as a case in point. Still, he has proved serious and persistent in protecting the Amazon as a vital asset for both the global climate system and biodiversity. Indeed, since 2003 his governments have demonstrated that deforestation can be curbed: annual clearance of Brazilian Amazon amounted to 3,335 square kilometers in 2026, equaling a 42% decline from the previous year and the lowest deforestation rate since monitoring began in 1988.
The strategy behind this achievement is underpinned by a cross-governmental action plan to prevent and control deforestation in the Amazon, known by the unwieldy acronym PPCDAm. It effectively combines environmental law enforcement, satellite monitoring and territorial planning. Further, it provides for demarcation of protected areas, recognition of Indigenous lands and economic incentives for deforestation-free production. Political leadership galvanized these components over more than two decades, with a serious interruption only under the presidency of Flávio Bolsonaro‘s father, Jair, from 2019 to 2022.
Crucially, the strategy has been underpinned by strong institutions: The federal space research agency INPE monitors forest loss by satellite; the Brazilian Institute of the Environment and Renewable Natural Resources IBAMA investigates violations and applies sanctions; the Chico Mendes Institute for Biodiversity Conservation, ICMBio, a further government agency under the administration of the environment ministry, manages federal protected areas. Experienced staff, technical knowledge and established procedures proved their resilience even during the hostile conditions of Jair Bolsonaro’s term. Yet, they are not immune to obstruction: staff shortages, difficult logistics, protracted sanctions procedures and, of course, budget cuts and political appointments affect their capacity to act. Lula’s re-election now secures the continuation of federal efforts to curb deforestation. It establishes a new lease on life for pertinent institutions, which should allow them to grow stronger and to weather political turbulences.
This will be all the more decisive as parliamentary arithmetic is far less reassuring. Observatório do Clima rates 67% of incoming deputies and 79% of senators as having low or very low environmental alignment. Both proportions have risen in recent elections. Bolsonaro’s Liberal Party, or PL, expanded to 121 deputies and 28 senators, strengthening alliances around hardliners of the powerful agribusiness parliamentary caucus, the Frente Parlamentar Agropecuária. Already, congress has demonstrated its appetite for deregulation. It overturned 52 of Lula’s 63 vetoes to a new environmental licensing law – dubbed ‘Devastation Law’ by its critics – which relaxes requirements for authorizing projects and activities with environmental impacts. A bill led by Flávio Bolsonaro to abolish mandatory native-vegetation reserves on rural properties indicates the scope and potential impact of deregulation promoted by PL. A core element of Brazil’s Forest Code, this requirement obliges landowners to retain native vegetation on a proportion of their property, with the percentage varying by biome. In the Amazon biome, this share is 80%. Scientists caution that abolishing the requirement could expose some 167 million hectares to clearance.
The elections in Brazil’s federal states, where governors wield considerable influence over land use, licensing and enforcement, offer little reassurance either. Three states along the Amazon’s so-called ‘arc of deforestation’ illustrate the challenge. Pará, Brazil’s second-largest state, combines lofty bioeconomy promises with priorities for faster environmental licensing and infrastructure expansion. In Rondônia, the governor-elect proposes to accelerate authorization for agricultural activities to 48 hours on the basis of agribusinesses’ self-declared risk assessments. That would be tantamount to blank cheques: where chainsaws can establish precedents prior to effective inspection, the speed of authorization seems a questionable measure of good government. The state of Mato Grosso in turn has adopted legislation excluding companies from state tax incentives if they participate in voluntary agreements, such as the scientifically acclaimed Soy Moratorium, that advance production and trading standards beyond federal requirements.
These examples beg the question how policies and institutions may succeed in reducing deforestation, if few voters and even less decision makers consider forest protection a political priority? They rather expose conflicting visions of development in which conservation competes with established promises of prosperity through agricultural expansion. Indeed, the regional news organization InfoAmazonia indicated that expanding agricultural production appears to prompt declining electoral support for parties rated favourably on climate policy. While this does not establish causation, it highlights the scope of the challenge.
A development model based on conservation and regeneration needs more than an ecological rationale. It needs to demonstrate that restoring land, managing forests and developing biodiversity-based value chains can generate reliable incomes, decent employment and public revenues. Otherwise, forest protection is bound to remain a global concern with little local ownership. What, then, are the chances that Brazil’s anti-deforestation policy will endure and deliver on Lula’s proclaimed 2030 goal of net-zero deforestation?
For a start, PPCDAm must be geared to the 2030 net-zero target: reliably distinguish authorized from illegal clearance, compensate for legal deforestation through restoration of native vegetation with high biodiversity value, and tackle forest degradation, which has grown in relative importance, leaving forests more vulnerable to fire. While this would be no mean feat, the political challenges appear more formidable still. Congress may seek to target the Forest Code and other safeguards for deregulation, while some states can be expected to try to obstruct enforcement, decline cooperation, and cut budgets.
Yet opposition need not prevail. Lula is an experienced political negotiator with allies beyond government. Alongside more progressive parts of agribusiness, private companies, that have made ecological landscape restoration their business case, and their financial backers have considerable stakes in a forest-based economy. For instance, Re.green’s carbon-purchase agreement with Microsoft helped to secure US$ 15 million from the Climate Fund of Brazil’s national development bank BNDES. Their business depends on forests surviving and delivering verified carbon removals, giving them a material interest in effective protection. Some major buyers also require community participation, fair benefit sharing and ecological safeguards. These interests could strengthen Lula’s coalition. They need credible standards and public oversight to turn investment into lasting local and environmental gains.
And then there is international cooperation and, indeed, finance. Ever since the erstwhile Rio Earth Summit of 1992, it has helped Brazilian governments to build capacity and with considerable impact: Indigenous-land demarcation, protected areas, sustainable value chains and results-based finance stand out among numerous joint achievements. The Amazon Fund now receives support from the UK, EU, Japan, Denmark, Switzerland and Ireland alongside its original funders Norway and Germany. Add to this approximately US$7.3 billion in international pledges to the Tropical Forest Forever Facility, initiated by Brazil at the UN climate conference COP30 in Belém to benefit tropical forests worldwide. Brazil itself could receive annual payments of around US$4 per hectare of eligible forest – provided the facility secures US$25 billion in public and philanthropic capital, mobilises a further US$100 billion from private investors, and earns sufficient returns above its financing costs.
The challenge now is not to lose momentum, even as development cooperation, which funnels the lion’s share of international climate finance, faces strong opposition across the European Union. Indeed, investments in global public goods are notoriously a hard sell for politicians. As the EU repositions itself in multilateral climate diplomacy, it needs to develop a clearer narrative and perhaps new strategic priorities – to be developed together with partners like Brazil. Trade can be a crucial vehicle to that end, including with regard to environmental policy, even as measures like the EU’s Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism and the EU Deforestation Regulation are highly contested by its Southern partners. Still, international cooperation may harness an expanding EU-MERCOSUR trade agreement for mutual benefit, for instance by targeting agricultural supply chains and helping producers to meet environmental requirements that link forest protection with continued market access.
Selling out on the protection of the Amazon, in contrast, would be mutually harmful. If Lula manages to stay his course, the goal of net-zero deforestation by 2030 can stay within reach. His international partners should match his persistence with the courage to defend their commitments and the resources to deliver on them.
