Can Brazil become a global leader in fighting climate change?

President-elect Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva has told global leaders that “Brazil is back” in the battle against climate change.

Addressing the Cop27 summit in his first major international speech since his election victory last month, the left-wing leader – commonly known as Lula – vowed to protect the Amazon rainforest and reverse the destructive policies of his predecessor, Jair Bolsonaro.

“We must stop this rush to the abyss. There is no climate security for the world without a protected Amazon," he said.“We will do whatever it takes to have zero deforestation and the degradation of our biomes.”

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Although there is “no doubt” that Lula “is full of ambition when it comes to tackling climate change”, said the BBC’s Georgina Rannard, “analysts say the challenge will be to make these promises come true”. And with Brazil “deeply divided” over his return for a third term as president, “his job to unite the country won't be easy”, Rannard reported from the summit in Egypt’s Red Sea city of Sharm el-Sheikh.

What happened under Bolsonaro?

After taking office in 2019, Bolsonaro “pushed for more mining and commercial farming in the Amazon, saying it would develop the region economically and help to fight poverty”, reported Reuters’s Brazil-based environment correspondent Jake Spring. The far-right leader also “weakened environmental enforcement agencies, cutting their budgets and staff while making it more difficult to punish environmental criminals”.

Brazil’s emissions increased by 12% last year, following a 9.5% hike in 2020. And deforestation in the Amazon has increased by 64% in the past 12 months, “affecting an area almost twice as large as New York City – on top of the loss of an area larger than Belgium in his first two years in power”, said The Independent’s world affairs editor Kim Sengupta.

Brazil is home to about 60% of the Amazon, which plays a crucial role in the fight against climate change.

If deforestation in the Amazon hits 25% of its original coverage, Brazilian journalist Amanda Magnani said on Al Jazeera, “changes in the rainfall regime will permanently affect its ability to regenerate – a point of no return where the forest will produce more carbon dioxide than it can absorb”.

Marcio Santilli, a founding partner of the Socio-environmental Institute in São Paulo, told the news site that “without the Amazon, it impossible to keep alive the goal of limiting global warming to 1.5C above pre-industrial levels”.

Is Lula’s return good news for the planet?

Lula’s election victory “may be the turning point that environmentalists have been hoping for”, said NB News Science correspondent Denise Chow.

During his first two terms in office, between 2003 and 2010, Lula “instituted so-called command-and-control policies that used regulations and better monitoring to decrease deforestation”, Chow reported.

According to London-based think-tank Chatham House, “the rate of deforestation systematically decreased by 70%” between 2004 to 2012 as these policies were implemented.

Lula’s environmental record is by no means perfect, however. During his last premiership, he “backed the massive Belo Monte hydroelectric dam in the Amazon, which destroyed river habitats and displaced indigenous people”, said Reuters’s Spring. Deforestation also “began to creep up again under his hand-picked successor”, Dilma Rousseff, who weakened some environmental policies in order to boost economic development.

And while Lula is now promising to restore his country’s environmental agencies to their former strength, “with Brazil's government facing a budget crunch, it remains unclear how he will pay for his policies”, Spring added.

The Brazilian people will be watching him closely, according to Marcio Astrini, executive secretary of the national Climate Observatory network. Astrini told the BBC that Lula needed to focus on rebuilding Brazil’s environmental agencies, unfreezing the Amazon Fund – a rainforest protection project halted under Bolsonaro – and tackling criminals cashing in on deforestation.

“When the government is succeeding, we will support them, but if it fails, we will criticise them,” Astrini said.

Lula is also likely to face significant political hurdles in enacting his promised environmental policies and reversing those of his predecessor, said Magnani on Al Jazeera.

“With 247 pro-Bolsonaro parliamentarians elected” during the 2022 elections, “Congress will be a challenge”, she wrote, “especially as the chamber uses the final days of the current government to fast-track pending bills set to hinder the demarcation of Indigenous lands and allow mining activities”.