Lula’s environmental agenda is in crisis: the Brazilian government is gambling its green credibility in the eyes of the world.
- What is Lula’s environmental agenda?
- Is Brazil’s environmental record in crisis?
- What are the challenges facing Lula’s environmental agenda?
- How is the Amazon rainforest being affected by deforestation?
- What is the role of the Brazilian government in protecting the environment?
The decision of the Federal Supreme Court on the “Temporary Framework”, a law that modifies the demarcation system of the country’s indigenous lands promoted by the agribusiness sector, has become a never-ending story.
The decision of the Federal Supreme Court (STF) on the “Temporary Framework”, a law that modifies the demarcation system of the country’s indigenous lands promoted by the agribusiness sector, has become a never-ending story and, after yesterday’s favorable vote by Judge André Mendonça, the debate has moved to today.
Starting with a case involving the indigenous land Xokleng Ibirama Laklaño and the State of Santa Catarina the STF decision will serve as a guideline for all indigenous land demarcation processes in the country, deciding whether or not the new “Temporary Framework” law voted by the Chamber of Deputies is unconstitutional. If it is also approved by the Senate, indigenous peoples who cannot prove that they were physically living on their lands on October 5, 1988, the day the Brazilian Constitution was promulgated, will no longer have rights over them. With two judges in favor and two against, today could be decisive, but it could also end in a new postponement.
Considered a terrible decision for indigenous communities and land protection, the Temporary Framework is not the only test that challenges the environmentalist identity of Lula’s government. The next is the exploration of the national oil company Petrobras in the so-called Equatorial Margin, 175 km from the mouth of the Amazon River, in the middle of the Amazon. It is an issue that has inflamed the environmental debate in Brazil for months with, on the one hand, the Minister of the Environment, Marina Silva, fiercely defending the veto of Ibama, the Brazilian Institute of Environment and Renewable Natural Resources and, on the other, Lula, who has repeatedly and ambiguously declared that all the delicacy of the case is needed but that Petrobras must not give up its dream.
And, indeed, last week the Federal Attorney General’s Office (AGU) issued a technical opinion that could give the green light to oil extraction in the Amazon. According to the AGU, the Environmental Assessment of Sedimentary Areas requested by Ibama last May is not indispensable and, therefore, cannot be used for the veto process. In fact, the AGU’s opinion now represents a coup de theater in favor of Petrobras’ authorization, even against Ibama’s opinion. The AGU issued its opinion at the request of the Minister of Mines and Energy, Alexandre Silveira, a strong supporter of the project. Marina Silva, together with the president of Ibama, Rodrigo Agostinho, commented harshly on the news, saying that “conciliation on a technical issue, an agreement on an environmental authorization, is not possible”.
Just yesterday, the Mines and Energy Commission of the Chamber of Deputies publicly debated the matter with Marina Silva. “The decision on oil exploitation does not depend on the Ministry of Environment, nor on Ibama, it is a government decision. It is a decision that is not only in President Lula’s head, that is why the National Energy Policy Council exists,” said Marina Silva. “It is common sense that should guide the debate, you cannot have a denialist attitude. Science is saying it,” the minister added, citing a series of environmental tragedies, such as coastal flooding in the state of São Paulo last February, caused by political mismanagement despite the warnings of science. Indigenous writer and activist Ailton Krenak stated in an interview to the portal UOL that Marina Silva could resign if the impasse is not resolved.
The Equatorial Margin is a maritime region that extends from Guyana to the state of Rio Grande do Norte in Brazil. Only French Guiana has not yet explored for oil in this area. In Guyana, the US company ExxonMobil has already discovered 11 billion barrels in eight years, which represents 75% of Brazil’s total oil reserves of 14.8 billion barrels. In Suriname, the first discovery was made in 2020. In 3 years, it showed an extraction potential of 4 billion barrels, about 27% of Brazil’s reserves. Ibama, however, warned of the potential environmental risks and refused the license because of the possible impact on indigenous communities due to the planes that would fly over the oil platform and because of the response time and assistance to the fauna affected by the oil in case of spill. But above all because of the lack of technical studies, which the recent AGU decision left out of play. For Petrobras, this is a strategic exploration, since there are no other significant reserves in the country besides the so-called pre-salt, the 800-kilometer stretch of seabed between the states of Espírito Santo, Santa Catarina and Santos.
Precisely the issue of oil prospecting had been a source of tension between the President of Colombia, Gustavo Petro, and Lula during the summit of Amazonian countries held at the beginning of August. Lula did not accept Petro’s proposal to veto oil exploration in the Amazon, while the tug-of-war continues with Europe, which has demanded a greater environmental commitment from Brazil as a condition for signing the Mercosur agreement. However, Lula’s recent accusations of “green neo-colonialism” during the BRICS meeting in South Africa did not prevent him from also bringing the Chinese into Petrobras, further complicating the scenario.
On Monday, Petrobras president Jean Paul Prates declared that Xi Jinping’s China “will be a decisive partner for the oil company’s return to the world stage”. Petrobras had been the pandora’s box of corruption uncovered by the pool of magistrates of Operation Lava Jato. Under Bolsonaro, it had recovered profits and credibility through a privatization program that was later opposed by the current government. Lula 3.0’s Petrobras, in the midst of the Chinese economic crisis, has just signed two memorandums of understanding with the two main Chinese state-owned banks, the China Development Bank (CDB) and the Bank of China. According to Petrobras’ official statement, the MOU agreement is “aimed at evaluating investment and cooperation opportunities in low-carbon and green finance initiatives, contributing to the financing of Petrobras’ domestic supply chain, and increasing commercial and financial exchanges between Petrobras and Chinese companies.”
It is not clear from the statement whether the collaboration will be carried out through loans that Petrobras will receive from Chinese banks. It is worth remembering that, in the event of default, debt restructuring with the Chinese financial system, totally regulated by the State, is very difficult, as shown by the economic strangulation of countries such as Sri Lanka and Pakistan, not to mention many African countries such as Zambia. In addition to Beijing’s reluctance to forgive debts and its extreme secrecy about how much money is lent and on what terms, which has often prevented other major lenders from stepping in to help, there is the recent discovery that Beijing requires borrowers to deposit money in hidden escrow accounts that put China at the top of the list of creditors to be repaid. Beijing therefore has every interest in pressing on oil exploitation in the Amazon and will force Lula’s usual strategic ambiguity to have to choose which path to take. Whether the path of economic profit, with the risk of handing over the state oil company to the Chinese if things go wrong financially, or the path of environmental protection.
Other signs indicate that Brazilian environmentalism is still very fragile in many respects. Beyond the political slogans and grandiloquent promises to achieve zero deforestation, the rules of the game remain the same. For example, the Brazilian government has yet to regulate essential parts of the Forestry Code, an 11-year-old law that is still deficient in controlling deforestation. The decision to transfer the Rural Environmental Registry from the Ministry of Environment to the Ministry of Management and Innovation of Public Services for environmentalists was the final blow. “It was an absolute irresponsibility. The Ministry of Management has no administrative capacity to deal with this issue, no technical capacity, no minimum conditions to take on this responsibility,” said Beto Mesquita, of the Climate, Forests and Agriculture Coalition of Brazil.
Focusing all the media attention only on the Amazon has also had a devastating impact on other jewels of the Brazilian environment, such as the Pantanal, the world’s largest wetland, an immense alluvial plain that Brazil shares in the Mato Grosso region with neighboring Bolivia and Paraguay. The city council of Cáceres, population 100,000 in the state of Mato Grosso, which had included “the defense of the rights of nature” in the main municipal law, a decision considered historic, changed its mind about ten days ago under pressure from the agribusiness sector. Thus, the possibility for the law to protect the parts of the territory whose biome was considered endangered has disappeared. In 2020, according to a study published yesterday and conducted by INPE, the National Institute for Space Research, devastating fires burned more than 30% of the Pantanal, some 45,000 square kilometers. In addition, there has been the paradox that roads announced by the government of Jair Bolsonaro as “works to bring the Pantanal out of isolation” have become new drug trafficking routes. Last June, Operation Ardea of the Brazilian Federal Police uncovered a network of drug traffickers that even used airplanes to transport drugs to the Pantanal from Bolivia.
With the cheapest land in Brazil and no specific legislation to curb the destruction, the Pantanal is attracting a new type of investors who are displacing the original inhabitants of the region by accelerating deforestation. The new “owners”, usually the nouveau riche, are buying up the historic estates that kept the biome intact in order to prioritize unchecked profit. As for the Cerrado, the Brazilian savannah and the second largest biome in Latin America, with an area of two million square kilometers, equivalent to the territory of Mexico, has been registering record deforestation figures for two years. From August 2022 to July 2023, 6,300 square kilometers were destroyed, according to INPE data, and 75% of the deforestation was recorded in the states of Maranhão, Tocantins, Piauí and Bahia. “The Mercosur-EU agreement emphasizes the sustainability of the agricultural production chain, but continues to neglect the Cerrado. It is necessary and beneficial to prioritize it in diplomatic discussions,” says Inpe researcher Michel Eustáquio Dantas Chaves, one of the signatories of an open letter published on July 17 in the scientific journal Nature Sustainability, which warns of the environmental emergency that Brazil is currently experiencing in many of its regions.