Conservationists breathed a sigh of relief when Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva won Brazil’s presidential election in the fall of 2022. His predecessor, Jair Bolsonaro, had opened large parts of the Amazon region to business by crippling enforcement of environmental laws and turning a blind eye to land grabbing. It should come as no surprise that deforestation showed a sharp uptick.
However, while Lula oversaw a more than 70% drop in deforestation during his first run as president in the early 2000s, the rainforest’s future remains deeply uncertain.
