BRAZIL, LIGHTS AND SHADOWS ON LULA’S FIRST TWO MONTHS
The great enthusiasm that greeted the re-election of Ignacio Lula da Silva as President of Brazil last autumn also reverberated among the pavilions of COP27 in Sharm el-Sheikh when the newly elected President visited the Brazilian pavilion together with Environment Minister Marina Silva. Welcomed with choruses in the activists' embrace, Lula had even gone so far as to nominate Brazil as host country for COP30, scheduled for 2025, in the Amazon, symbolically stitching up the wound produced by Bolsonaro's sudden 'no' in 2019, to COP25 already organised and then migrated first to Chile, then to Spain, now bringing it to a highly symbolic location.
But how have the first two months of Lula's government gone from the point of view of the environment and climate? It is difficult, due to the complex international scenario, to draw a complete line, but the stories of a ship and of the Amazon Forest they are going to be mentioned, help us in the clearing up our minds.
ELECTIONS IN BRAZIL 2022: A KEY CLIMATE EVENT
Since Jair Bolsonaro assumed Brazil's presidency in 2019, the foreign policy of South America's largest country has traced the style of its leader. Instead, during these two weeks of intermediate negotiations here in Bonn, there has been a change in attitude on the part of the Brazilian delegation, with negotiators making constructive interventions on more than one occasion instead of engaging in the usual stonewalling. Brasilia seems to have cut its diplomats some slack, so it begs the question of what is the reason for this change in approach, which is almost disquieting when one considers the total dissonance with what is happening in Brazil on a daily basis. The most probable reason is the uncertainty surrounding the looming national elections in October, which probably does not allow for further "headaches" to be added to the country's already tense domestic situation.