One month before COP30, Lula boasts a positive climate change record

Host of COP30, President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva boasts a very positive climate balance, especially with the sharp reduction in deforestation in the Amazon, where the UN conference will be held in November.

The destruction of the planet's largest rainforest had soared under his predecessor, former President Jair Bolsonaro (PL), a climate change skeptic backed by the powerful agribusiness sector.

This lobby remains very influential in Congress and seeks to make the process of granting environmental licenses in the country more flexible, for example.

At the same time, Lula is criticized for supporting an oil exploration project on the Equatorial Margin, on the Amazon coast.

– Brazil “back” –

The idea of ​​hosting the UN climate conference in Belém, Pará, was announced in 2022, during COP27 in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt.

Lula was received at the meeting as a hero, proclaiming that Brazil was “back” on the international stage, shortly after being elected to succeed Bolsonaro.

For his third term, he once again placed Marina Silva, the architect of the fight against deforestation in his first governments (2003-2010), at the head of the Ministry of the Environment.

Brazil also reactivated the Amazon Fund, an international financing mechanism that had been suspended by Bolsonaro.

With resources from Norway, Germany, the United States and other countries, the fund has received almost 1.5 billion dollars (R$ 8.20 billion) since 2008 to preserve the Amazon.

For Marcio Astrini, from the Climate Observatory NGO network, Lula “recovered the climate and environmental agenda in Brazil.”

– Decrease in deforestation –

Lula also promised to reduce deforestation in Brazil to zero by 2030.

After surpassing 10,000 km² in 2022, the last year of the Bolsonaro government, devastation in the Amazon fell by half in 2023 and reached almost 4,200 km² in 2024, according to data from the Deter system of the National Institute for Space Research (INPE).

Deforestation has also decreased in other sensitive biomes, such as the Cerrado, the savanna with the greatest biodiversity in the world.

However, last year the country suffered one of its worst waves of man-made forest fires – often linked to livestock farming to clear pastures – which spread devastatingly due to a historic drought linked to climate change.

– Indigenous lands –

Lula also created the Ministry of Indigenous Peoples and approved 16 indigenous lands in his third term, a process that had been stalled in previous governments.

Several experts believe that these territories, protected by the Union, play an essential role in the fight against global warming, acting as a shield against deforestation and fires.

For Astrini, land demarcation is especially important if an anti-environmental candidate wins the 2026 presidential elections.

"A new government can remove Ibama's budget, it can undo climate policies, it can stop field operations, but it won't be able to undo an indigenous area," he told AFP.

Government policies have also expelled invaders from more than 180,000 km² of indigenous lands (an area slightly smaller than Uruguay), according to Funai.

Local populations once again have "the freedom to move around, to hunt again," and have managed to "reclaim their territories," Nilton Tubino, coordinator of indigenous policies for the federal government of Roraima, told AFP.

– Tropical Forest Fund –

The government also created a global initiative to promote the conservation of endangered forests: the Tropical Forests Forever Fund (TFFF).

“This is the main achievement that Brazil intends to make at the COP,” said Finance Minister Fernando Haddad.

Officials expect the TFFF to raise more than $100 billion (R$550 billion) in public and private capital. In September, Lula announced that Brazil will invest $1 billion (R$5.5 billion) in the initiative.

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