The planet’s lungs

A land of 200 million people, Brazil is the world’s fifth largest country but has an existential global role as the vast Amazon rainforest is the planet’s “lungs.”  Therefore, the fate of all who dwell on earth could depend on the outcome of Brazil’s 2022 presidential election. It is to be decided in an unexpected run-off on Oct.30 between former President Luis Inacio “Lula” da Silva and incumbent Jair Bolsonaro. Brazilians defied poll predictions by denying Lula 50 per cent of the vote in Sunday’s first round. He received, instead, 48 per cent and Bolsonaro won 45 per cent, 10 per cent than predicted.

The first round was not a straightforward fight between the two top contenders. There were nine other candidates who took votes away from both frontrunner Lula and Bolsonaro, who did better than expected although his approval rating had been falling. No one can predict the outcome of the coming round.

Environmentalists have placed their bets on Lula. He has pledged to halt the destruction of the rainforest which has proceeded apace under Bolsonaro. He has allowed miners, loggers, and farmers to invade and devastate vast areas of the rainforest. When Lula was last in office deforestation was dramatically reduced and, in some cases, reversed by as much as 90 per cent. While the Amazon forest has played an existential role in storing carbon dioxide (CO2), it now emits more than it absorbs thanks to Bolsonaro. He has also failed to protect indigenous Amazon tribesmen who oppose the destruction of their habitat. More than three dozen climate change activists who battle exploitation have been murdered.

While the Amazon rainforest had, until recently, played a major role in countering global warming, scientists have found the vast forests have reached a tipping point due to arson and tree felling which are turning exploited areas into desert. Writing in The Guardian six months ago, Damian Carrington pointed out that more than 75 per cent of the untouched forest has lost stability since the early 2000s, meaning that it takes longer to recover after droughts and wildfires.”

He said the “greatest loss of stability is in areas closer to farms, roads, and urban areas and in regions that are becoming drier, suggesting that a combination of forest destruction and global heating are the cause. Scientists express concern that the rainforest may not be able to recover and could be transformed “into grassland over a few decades at most, releasing huge amounts of carbon and accelerating global heating further.”

When Bolsonaro became president in early 2019, he revoked environmental protections and opened the forest to development. The result was immediate: CO2 emissions doubled in 2019 and 2020 in comparison with emissions during the previous decade. Carrington said that over the past year nearly a million hectares of forest has been torched and the number of fires has accelerated ahead of the election as arsonist invaders fear that they will be stopped if Lula is returned to power.

In office from 2003-2010, Lula, a charismatic leftist, was one of Brazil’s most successful and popular presidents. Raised in poverty, Lula, now 76, began his career as a shoe-shine boy. He learned to be a metal worker and became a leftist trade unionist and senior figure in the Workers Party. During his two terms in office, he initiated social reforms which lifted millions of Brazilians out of poverty and presided over a period of rapid economic growth.

Lula was succeeded by his chief-of staff and energy minister Dilma Rousseff, who served from 2011 until her 2016 impeachment for involvement in a scandal generated by the national oil company, Petrobras, in which politicians, civil servants, and businessmen were investigated and prosecuted for embezzlement, bribery, and money laundering.

Lula was charged, tried, and sentenced to more than nine years in prison but was released after spending 580 days in detention. He was cleared by the Supreme Court of all charges in 2021 on the ground that the judge in his trial was biased against Lula and his Workers Party. This ruling enabled him to run in the 2022 election but did not convince all Brazilians of his innocence.

Bolsonaro, 67, is a right-wing populist who retired from the military with rank of captain before entering politics at the local and national levels. He has portrayed himself as the family values and anti-corruption candidate. During the 2018 election campaign he pledged to form a cabinet based on merit but, once in office, appointed army officers to key posts, arguing that during the two decades of harsh military rule (1964-85) Brazil enjoyed prosperity and order. He likes to consider himself as another Donald Trump and, like Trump, denied the risks of the pandemic and warns of fraud in elections. He has vowed to contest the result of the presidential election if he loses.

Bolsonaro loosened Brazil’s gun laws in line with the policies of the US Republican Party which has blocked efforts to tighten controls on weapons despite mass shootings at US schools. Brazil’s infamous gangs, which are deeply involved in the drugs and arms trades, have used the relaxation of gun regulations to stock their arsenals. Paradoxically, while the number of privately-owned guns in Brazil doubled, the national crime rate has fallen to a 15-year low.

Thanks to Bolsonaro, Brazil has one of the world’s highest death rates from covid and has found it difficult to emerge from pandemic-related economic losses. The Ukraine war has deprived Brazilian farmers of Russian fertilizer reducing yields at a time Brazil is suffering from low economic growth, high inflation, increasing inequality and rampant corruption. This has prompted a shift to the left on Brazil’s political scene but it remains unclear whether this shift is large enough to return Lula to the presidency.

Many Brazilians and outsiders see Bolsonaro not only as a threat to democracy as well as a danger to the planet. Brazil remains ranked among the world’s “Mostly Unfree” countries.

Photo: TNS