Can Brazil save the Amazon rainforest? Marina Silva is trying

When the United Nations climate conference COP29 kicks off Monday in Baku, Azerbaijan, attendees will be grappling with the re-election of former US President Donald Trump. Countries will try to find a path forward that bypasses Trump, who is hostile to emissions-cutting policies and has vowed to pull the country back out of the Paris accord.

Yet even as delegates arrive in Baku, preparations are underway for the 2025 edition of the summit, in Brazil. COP30 will be the first COP held in the Amazon rainforest and will see the debut of a new global order on climate, with the US likely playing a much diminished role and China, possibly, a larger one. That raises the stakes, and the pressure on the host — which was already high.

“The challenge of being the leader of COP30 next year, in the heart of the Amazon forest, is huge,” said Marina Silva, Brazil’s environment minister and top climate diplomat, at an event on the sidelines of the World Bank and IMF meetings in Washington, DC, in late October. The event is already being talked about as “the green COP,” Silva added.

For two years in a row, COP has been hosted by oil-rich autocracies with climate plans that are “critically insufficient,” according to the research partnership Climate Action Tracker. Brazil is different. It may be among the world’s top 10 oil exporters, but it’s also a world leader in new wind and solar installations and has strong climate commitments. So observers hope that when Brazil hosts the talks, more aggressive goal-setting will be possible. Otherwise, the world will be in even deeper trouble.

Also read: The irony about climate meets

2025 is the 10-year anniversary of the Paris agreement, when nearly 200 countries agreed to rein in warming from levels so catastrophic it could reshape the world map. But countries are decidedly not on track. Temperatures have already risen 1.3C compared to the preindustrial era. Despite progress in scaling up green energy worldwide, fossil fuel use hit a record high last year and emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases are still rising at levels that the UN warns could result in “dire” warming of up to 3.1C.

Brazil's COP, the COP for reducing CO2 emissions

That means the time for talk is over. “If we are ambitious about announcing goals, we have to be ambitious about implementing them,” Silva said in an interview with Bloomberg Green. To that end, “Brazil's COP has to be the COP for reducing CO2 emissions.”

Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva (who is not related to Marina Silva) chose to host COP30 in Belém, a port city near the mouth of the Amazon River, so that tens of thousands of decision-makers can see the richness and fragility of the rainforest up close. One of the most biodiverse places on Earth, the Amazon also stores massive amounts of CO2, making it an essential defence against climate change. But as this year has shown, the forest is itself vulnerable to warming. Hot, dry conditions have helped fuel thousands of fires, scorching millions of hectares of land and sending smoke as far as the capital of Brasilia and the financial hub of Sao Paulo.

The pressure for COP30 to deliver rests on Lula, and also on Silva. Born into poverty on a rubber plantation in a rural, forested part of northern Brazil, Silva didn’t learn to read or write until she was a teenager. After rising to prominence as an activist, she joined Lula’s government during his first term as president.

Silva, 66, found success in politics not because of charisma but to a character that’s “demure,” “genuine” and “profoundly ethical,” people who have worked with her say. Her steadfast advocacy for the Amazon and its communities, and her willingness to draw red lines against policies she can’t support, have gained admiration not just in Brazil but around the world.

Silva’s influence was critical to President Lula moving climate issues up his agenda after winning a third term in 2022. Brazil last year committed to a roughly 53% reduction in its emissions by 2030, compared to 2005 levels. It has pledged to end deforestation by 2030.

She “brought Lula around to appreciating the importance of protecting the Amazon, and Brazil taking environmental leadership in the world,” said Steve Schwartzman, associate vice president for tropical forest policy at the Environmental Defense Fund.

She is “always reminding” her colleagues that there’s no time to waste to tackle the climate crisis, said André Corrêa do Lago, secretary for climate, energy, and environment at the Brazilian Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

At COP29 and COP30, Silva can bring her credibility to bear on tense arguments over fossil fuel use, climate finance and other contentious issues. But whether that will be enough to get past long-standing political deadlock, largely between the developing and developed worlds, isn’t clear.

Lula and Silva have known each other for decades, their relationship shifting from friendly, to estranged, to closely allied. Both were members of Brazil’s Workers’ Party early on. In her twenties, Silva worked with rubber tapper and activist Francisco Alves Mendes Filho — better known as Chico Mendes — who fought for communities being driven off their lands by cattle ranchers’ hired guns. He was killed for it.

His assassination put a spotlight on the Amazon’s deforestation problem. Following in his footsteps, Silva became a prominent Amazon activist and ultimately proved successful at navigating politics. In 1994, at age 35, she became the youngest woman elected to the Brazilian senate. By the time Lula won the Brazilian presidency, taking office in 2003, Silva was the obvious candidate for environment minister.

Under her watch, Brazil launched its first deforestation action plan. It’s credited with driving down deforestation more than 80% between 2004 and 2012, even as cattle herds and soybean production grew. That showed clearing more trees wasn’t needed to develop these agricultural sectors.

But during Lula’s second term, Silva resigned. She was exhausted by the constant pushback against environmental regulations both inside and outside the government, and objected to large-scale development in the Amazon that Lula and other officials supported. Silva ran for president herself in 2010, 2014 and 2018, without success.

Then came President Jair Bolsonaro, who oversaw a systematic dismantling of the country’s forest protections. Deforestation surged. Bolsonaro’s far-right agenda was what finally brought Lula and Silva back together. So when Lula took on Bolsonaro in the 2022 presidential election, Silva helped her former boss win.

Goal to end deforestation

Brazil epitomises the one-step-forward, one-step-back nature of climate progress as a country that now gets 90% of its electricity from non-fossil sources but remains a major oil exporter. It’s unusual, however, in that the biggest source of its emissions is from changes in land use. Because of that, Silva advocated for, and Lula embraced, the goal of Brazil ending deforestation in just a few years. And it has made good progress, despite the government having to rebuild its capacity to thwart illegal deforestation after the Bolsonaro era.

Last year Brazil cut deforestation by 50%, according to government data, and this year it has dropped a significant amount again, Silva told Bloomberg Green. By the time Lula’s term ends in 2026, she said, Brazil has to have policies operational to ensure “zero deforestation in 2030.”

In the Amazon, many poor families have cleared trees to grow sugarcane, soyabeans or other crops as a matter of survival. If the country eliminates deforestation, rainforest communities will still need ways to survive and improve their living standards.

Corrêa do Lago said Silva has always been “very sensitive to the social dimension of environmental issues.” Beyond saving nature, he said, “she wants to take care of people.” So Silva splits her efforts between stamping out deforestation and trying to make conservation of the forest profitable.

One possible way to do that is through carbon credits. Lula’s government has introduced legislation to launch a state-run carbon market. The effort has stalled in Brazil’s congress, partly due to pushback from conservative lawmakers backed by the cattle and agriculture industries, which benefited the most from aggressive tree-clearing.

There’s also the Amazon Fund. After Lula launched it in 2008, other countries began to give Brazil donations toward halting deforestation and supporting the communities and industries reliant on the forest. Foreign donors stopped contributing in 2019 as deforestation increased under Bolsonaro. Lula later revived the fund, and it’s grown to roughly 4 billion reais ($710 million).

Climate finance

But speaking in Washington last month, Silva made clear that donations alone aren’t going to cut it. That’s why she will be talking about climate finance at COP29, as well as pitching a new Basel Accord, an international agreement on capital requirements for banks, on the sidelines of the forthcoming G20 meeting in Brazil. She also wants to see new financial instruments that embrace conservation.

Trump’s return can’t be allowed to hinder global progress, she said November 6, and the US still has a big responsibility to reduce emissions: “We’re working hard, and obviously the world is going to make sure that no country makes any kind of stepbacks in relation to what we’ve achieved.”

“We have turned nature into money, and now we have to turn money into preserving, restoring and conserving nature,” Silva said. “This is the only way to make money in the future. Otherwise, it won’t work.”

There remains one big source of tension between Silva and Lula. The president has revived plans to expand offshore drilling, saying the proceeds can finance the energy transition. Silva has been adamant that Brazil and the world must abandon fossil fuels. Lula and Silva have not opposed each other publicly on the subject, though it could come to a head at COP30 or sooner.

Rising emissions could ultimately be ruinous for the Amazon, even if deforestation is halted. The grim possibility hangs over Silva. But the enormity of the challenge ahead won’t slow her down, she said: “I know the size of the responsibility, of the efforts — and I feel committed.”

More stories like this are available on bloomberg.com