The Brazilian presidential election yesterday was billed as one of the most consequential in decades – not just for the country but for the future of the planet. Anyone paying attention to either the climate crisis or the Amazon, the world’s largest rainforest, could hardly quibble with that description.
The good news is that the Amazon can expect a breather. After four years of Jair Bolsonaro’s often destructive policies, the right-wing incumbent is being replaced. His leftist challenger Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva squeaked home with 50.9 per cent of the vote in a bitter contest that ended with the smallest winning margin since the end of the military dictatorship in the 1980s.
Around 40 per cent of all the virgin forest cut down last year was in Brazil, helping it become the world’s sixth-largest emitter of greenhouse gases. Deforestation increased every year under Bolsonaro and this year hit a 15-year high.
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