New president's bid to protect the Amazon will face hurdles

RIO DE JANEIRO (AP) — In a victory speech Sunday, Brazil’s president-elect Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva promised to reverse a surge in deforestation in the Amazon rainforest.

“We will once again monitor and do surveillance in the Amazon. We will fight every illegal activity,” leftist da Silva said in his speech at a hotel in downtown Sao Paulo. “At the same time, we will promote sustainable development of communities in the Amazon.”

To achieve this in his third term, he will have to boost environmental law enforcement, face a hostile Congress and deal with state governors who have strong ties with the defeated far-right President Jair Bolsonaro.

If he is serious, the job will be immense. The area deforested in Brazil’s Amazon reached a 15-year high from August 2020 to July 2021, according to official figures. Satellite monitoring shows the trend in 2022 is on track to surpass the previous year.

On the ground, the main challenge will be to rebuild environmental agencies and Brazil’s Indigenous bureau. Da Silva also promised to create a ministry of Indigenous affairs headed by an Indigenous person.

Under Bolsonaro, these have been led by appointees close to the agribusiness sector, which has long pushed for the legalization of land robbing and opposes the creation of protected areas such as Indigenous territories.

In 2023, the agribusiness sector, which backed Bolsonaro’s failed reelection bid, will control about half of the Congress. In recent years, the caucus advanced bills to ease environmental legislation.

At the state level, six out of nine Amazon governors are Bolsonaro allies, most with strong ties with agribusiness. One of them, Marcos Rocha, from Rondonia state, got reelected two days after he made a high profile bid to burnish his anti-environment credentials...