Brazil’s presidential election result is crucial for the future of the world’s forests. On Sunday, former president and Workers Party candidate Lula da Silva narrowly beat the incumbent, Jair Bolsonaro. Deforestation rates had surged under Bolsonaro.
Bolsonaro was elected in 2018 on an explicitly anti-environmental platform. He had promised to reduce environmental oversight, halt Indigenous land demarcations and allow the extraction of resources from protected areas in the Amazon. Lula’s victory speech signalled a strong commitment to preserving the Amazon, protecting Indigenous people’s rights and reaching a zero-deforestation target.
During Bolsonaro’s first three years in office, 33,200 square kilometres of forest was cleared. That’s an area two-and-a-half times the size of the Greater Sydney region.
