Climate Activists Celebrate Lula’s Win in Brazil, but Warn the Fight Is Far From Over
A narrow win is a win, but it's the narrowness that keeps me up at night. Lula's re-election is being toasted as a victory for the Amazon and for climate policy worldwide, and it is. Yet the fact that a candidate openly hostile to environmental protections came within a hair's breadth of the presidency tells you how contested this ground still is.
Activists are right to celebrate while keeping their guard up. The institutions that protect the world's largest rainforest were nearly handed to someone who would have gutted them. Lula's own record on deforestation is mixed, and he'll face a congress and a political climate that don't make environmentalism easy.
I'd want to know what his first hundred days actually deliver on enforcement, on land rights, on the agencies Bolsonaro's camp wanted to dismantle. Celebrations are fine, but the real test is whether the forest sees the difference on the ground.