Brazil's Lula to talk climate at U.N., but Amazon fires back home undermine his message

When Brazil’s President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva opens the U.N. General Assembly on Tuesday, he is expected to call on the world to do more to combat climate change. It remains to be seen whether he will address fires ravaging the rainforest back home and criticism of his administration's own environmental stewardship.

Brazil's Amazon saw 38,000 blazes last month — the most for any August since 2010, according to data from the country's space institute. September is on track to repeat that ignoble feat. Smoke has been choking residents of many cities, including metropolis Sao Paulo that's thousands of miles away.

Lula has cast these fires as the result of criminals and proposed harsher punishments for environmental offenders. But enforcement has been hampered by a six-month strike at environmental regulator Ibama that ended in August — three months after his administration was aware of significantly heightened risk of fires amid historic drought.

At the same time, members of his Cabinet have presented conflicting views of environmental and energy policies. And Lula's rhetoric about tapping oil reserves near the mouth of the Amazon River has worried environmentalists who want Brazil to drive a global transition to clean energy. This month, he promised to pave a road in the Amazon experts say will drive deforestation.

When Lula was last president, between 2003 and 2010, he repeatedly spoke about climate change, holding up Brazil as a beacon of conservation for the future and blaming rich countries for polluting the planet while failing to help developing nations maintain their forests. And after Lula took office in 2023 after pledging to protect the environment, his administration succeeded in reducing illegal deforestation in the Amazon by 22% in its first year.

But now, his calls for an awakening to the need for collective environmental action may be heard differently, says Brazilian political consultant Thomas Traumann.

“Lula has always attended international gatherings with a lot to say, with many calling him a champion on the environment. This time that won’t ring true,” Traumann said. “We can’t say his administration is to blame for all these fires. There’s a lot of support for them at the local level. But some of this would never have taken place if the Ibama strike hadn't gone for so long.”

Lula announced on Friday that anyone caught setting fires in forests will pay fines of up to $1,800 per hectare. He also announced additional spending of up to 500 million reais ($90 million) to fight fires nationwide.

Brazil's president hadn't changed his tone from recent years when speaking on Sunday at a pre-General Assembly summit in New York.

“Going back on our commitments is to put in jeopardy everything that we built so arduously,” he said. “The sustainable development goals were the biggest diplomatic enterprise in recent years and they are bound to become our biggest collective failure.”

The day afterward, Energy Minister Alexandre Silveira said at an oil conference in Rio de Janeiro that he has “absolute conviction” Brazil will tap offshore oil reserves near the Amazon.

Environmentalist Tica Minami said during a protest outside the oil conference that Lula's administration “has sent conflicting signals in its policies.”

“It is not only the executive branch; Brazil's government as a whole that needs to prioritize protection,” she said. “Our government needs to be courageous and do what needs to be done for the environment and its people. But companies also have a lot of responsibility. They are the ones profiting from the destruction of the environment."

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