Brazil environment minister, climate summit star, faces political struggle at home

BELEM, Brazil - Brazilian Environment Minister Marina Silva fought back tears as global diplomats applauded her for several minutes on Saturday in the closing plenary of the COP30 global climate summit.

"We've made progress, albeit modestly," she told delegates gathered in the Amazon rainforest city of Belem, before raising a fist over her head defiantly. "The courage to confront the climate crisis comes from persistence and collective effort."

It was a moment of catharsis for the Brazilian hosts in a tense hall where several nations vented frustration with a deal that failed to mention fossil fuels - even as they cheered more funds for developing nations adapting to climate change.

Despite the bittersweet outcome, COP30 capped years of work by the environment minister and President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva to restore Brazil's leadership on global climate policy, dented by a far-right predecessor who denied climate science.

Back in Brasilia, a harsher political reality looms. Congress has been pushing to dismantle much of the country's environmental permitting system. Organized crime in the Amazon is also a problem, and people seeking to clear forest acres have found new ways to infiltrate and thwart groups touting sustainable development.

All this poses new threats to Brazil's vast ecosystems, forcing Lula and his minister to wage a rearguard battle to defend the world's largest rainforest. 

Scientists and policy experts warn that action is needed to discourage deforestation before a changing climate turns the Amazon into a tinderbox. Tensions have been mounting between a conservative Congress and the leftist Lula ahead of next year's general election. Forest land is often at heightened risk during election years.

Still, Silva insists Brazil can deliver on its promise to reduce deforestation to zero by 2030.  

"If I'm in the eye of the storm," she told Reuters, "I have to survive."

MIXED RECORD

Silva, born in 1958 in the Amazonian state of Acre to an impoverished family of rubber tappers, was more rock star than policymaker for many at COP30. Like Lula, she overcame hunger and scant early schooling to achieve global recognition. As his environment minister from 2003 to 2008, she sharply slowed the destruction of her native rainforest.

After more than a decade of estrangement from Lula's Workers Party, Silva reunited with him in 2022. Many environmentalists consider her return the most important move on climate policy in Lula's current mandate, which he has cast his agenda as an "ecological transformation" of Brazil's economy.

It is a stark contrast from surging deforestation under Lula's right-wing predecessor Jair Bolsonaro, who cheered on mining and ranching in the rainforest.

Still, Lula's actual environmental record has been ambiguous, said Juliano Assuncao, executive director of the Climate Policy Institute think tank in Brazil. 

"What we have at times is an Environment Ministry deeply committed to these issues, but at critical moments it hasn't been able to count on the support of the federal government in the way it should," he said.

Lula's government has halved deforestation in the Amazon, making it easier to fine deforesters and choke their access to public credit. New policies have encouraged reforestation and sustainable farming practices, such as cattle tracing.

Still, critics say Lula's government has not done enough to stop Congress as it undercut environmental protections and blocked recognition of Indigenous lands. Lawmakers have also attacked a private-sector agreement protecting the Amazon from the advance of soy farming.

Lula's environmental critics concede he has limited leverage.

When a government agency was slow to license oil exploration off the Amazon coast, the Senate pushed legislation to overhaul environmental permitting. Lula vetoed much of the bill, but lawmakers vowed to restore at least part of it this week. 

Similar tensions in Lula's last mandate prompted Silva to quit over differences with other cabinet ministers. This time around, Lula has been quick to defend her and vice-versa. 

During a recent interview in her Brasilia office, Silva suggested that Lula had not changed, but rather that a warming planet has ratcheted up the urgency of climate policy.

"Reality has changed," she said. "People who are guided by scientific criteria, by common sense, by ethics, have followed that gradual change." 

HIGHER TEMPERATURES, MORE GUNS

Earth's hottest year on record was 2024, fueling massive fires in the Amazon rainforest that for the first time erased more tree cover than chainsaws and bulldozers.

Brazilians hoping to preserve the Amazon must struggle against more than just a warmer climate and a skeptical Congress. Organized crime has grown in the region after years of tight funding left fewer federal personnel to fight back, said Jair Schmitt, who oversees enforcement at Brazil's environmental protection agency Ibama. 

Ibama agents have been caught more often in shootouts with gangs, he added, suggesting more guns than ever in the region. 

"Rifles weren't this easy to find before," he said.

Another challenge: Illegal deforesters have also infiltrated Amazon supply chains touting their sustainability, from biofuels to carbon credits, Reuters has reported. 

To overcome them, Brazil will need to steel its political will, said Marcio Astrini, the head of Climate Observatory, an advocacy group. Other than that, he added, "we have everything it takes to succeed." REUTERS