Trump 2.0 can open the door for a greener world
The impact of climate change and environmental protection last year was disastrous. United Nations-backed talks to tackle biodiversity, plastic pollution desertification and climate change either collapsed or produced grossly inadequate agreements. Donald Trump’s reelection for a second term in the US indicated that the opposition to climate change would only grow.
The year saw the highest ever record for the hottest year, and for the first time, average global temperatures exceeded the Paris Agreement’s 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels.
The prospects for effective climate change seem dim as we approach 2025. However, the rest of the world may be inspired to implement radical change due to Trump’s anti-climate policies and other major state and corporate polluters’ intransigence. In fact, 2025 might make it possible for the Global South to take action, so it makes sense that Brazil should take the lead in this year’s COP30.
Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, the president of Brazil, re-elected two years ago amid a promise of social and environmental change. After initial successes, however, his administration has lost momentum. Lula may have one more year to fulfill his commitments, lead the world in terms of climate change, and ensure that his legacy as a change-maker extends beyond Brazil’s borders.
Failed promises
During his presidential campaign, Lula heavily emphasised his rejection of his right-wing predecessor Jair Bolsonaro’s anti-environment and anti-minorities policies and promised to reverse them, focusing on the conservation of the Amazon and the protection of vulnerable communities, including the Indigenous.
After winning, he appointed Indigenous Affairs Minister Sonia Guajajara and climate activist Marina Silva to lead the new environmental ministry. He and prominent Indigenous leader Chief Raoni, who has come to represent the fight for the protection of the Amazon rainforest, walked together on January 1, 2023, for the ceremony.
Three weeks later, he visited the Yanomami community, which was devastated by land grabs, violence by illegal miners and loggers, food insecurity and disease. He declared that their situation was a genocide and promised to act right away.
His foreign policy emphasized climate change as well. At the COP28 held in Dubai in 2023, where countries from the Global South were pushing for progress on climate action, Lula declared: “Brazil is willing to lead by example”.
There were some initial achievements. In the first six months of Lula’s presidency, Amazon deforestation dropped by 33.6 percent. In order to stop illegal mining, the police and military were dispatched, and within a few months, the number of operating illegal mines dramatically decreased. Off the coast of the Amazon Delta, oil exploration was prohibited by the Brazilian Institute of the Environment and Renewable Natural Resources in May.
But Lula’s government failed to keep up the momentum. The illegal miners’ security operations were halted, which allowed them to resume their activities. Yanomami children’s death rates continued to rise, and indigenous communities also continued to suffer.
The progress made on deforestation started to slow down and in August 2024, deforestation rates , rose , again. Meanwhile, the expansion of land for agriculture and cattle breeding did not stop, it just , shifted , to the Cerrado savanna, where deforestation does not make headlines as the Amazon does.
The Lula administration has been pushing for the completion of the BR-319 highway, which is supposed to connect Roraima and Amazonas, to other parts of Brazil. The Amazon would be devastated by construction, which would harm indigenous communities and the environment.
Lula has also made a number of public comments supporting oil exploration off the Brazilian coast, despite Brazil’s worst wildfires and floods. Those actions by his governments have also drawn criticism.
From January to October, wildfires swept through Brazil, destroying large swaths of the Amazon rainforest and the Pantanal and devastating Indigenous communities, some 37.42 million acres, or about 15.1 million hectares, burned. Lula did not declare a state of emergency, which would have made it easier for local authorities to access federal resources in the wake of the crisis’s unprecedented scale.
Last chance to act
Trump will undoubtedly fulfill his campaign promises to end environmental laws and open the door for polluted industries to pollute as much as they want when he comes back to the White House in Washington. Other wealthy nations and businesses are already reversing their climate commitments.
The world needs a leader who can take decisive action in this world where the climate crisis is ongoing and the people who are most affected by it are completely ignored. Lula has been giving stunning speeches for the past two years about the need to address climate change, the need to protect the poor, and the need to establish a balance between those who bear the brunt of the damage.
He needs to put his words into practice now. As he once said back in 2023, it is now his time to lead by example. He has access to both human and natural resources to do so.
Nearly 1.7 million indigenous people who are knowledgeable about protecting and taking care of nature reside in Brazil, which is the largest rainforest on Earth. They have the least carbon footprint of all of us, so they are aware of what needs to be done to preserve this remarkable carbon sink. They must be included in Brazil’s comprehensive climate and environmental policies in addition to the urgent actions required to protect their communities.
Listening to the Indigenous people, as well as the scores of environmental experts and activists, some of whom are already in Lula’s administration, would mean that the president would have to give up on some traditional ties with big business.
Lula’s Workers Party (PT) is known for its addiction to fossil fuels. It’s about to end it, folks. Although Brazil’s public oil company, Petrobras, is an important economic player, it should not dictate the government’s environmental and economic policies. Brazil can invest in a sizable expansion of wind and solar given how affordable setting up renewable energy production is. Petrobras is already making such investments, instead of insisting on further oil drilling, it can double down on solar and wind and become the country’s leading renewable energy company.
Lula will also have to break free from Big Agribusiness’s toxic influence. Without causing deforestation and pollution, there is a way to raise and farm livestock. It will not be destroyed if it is forced to adopt sustainable, environmentally friendly practices, which would increase its resilience to the country’s unavoidable climate disasters.
The same goes for the mining sector. Although Lula’s government has already made some efforts to regulate it and stop illegal behavior, it needs to go all the way. Indigenous territories and nature reserves must be free of illegal mining.
To address this problem, the government could establish a task force made up of the intelligence branch and the military. They could entice both indigenous people and all those underprivileged people who had been sucked into illegal mining because of unemployment to help them. Eliminating illegal mining would not only preserve the rainforest and safeguard indigenous communities, but it would also severely devastate organized crime.
In fact, strong climate and natural preservation policies will benefit Brazilians as well as the environment. They would increase the number of safe and dignified job opportunities, which the PT’s electoral base is most eager to see.
Lula would gain more credibility for initiating radical change abroad. Action-backed words can have a significant impact. Demonstrating a commitment to climate change and the well-being of vulnerable communities can mobilise millions and give rise to inert governments as they emerge from a time when the world’s citizens feel abandoned by their political elites. If Lula has the will to pursue this, it might be the end of the world.
Source: Aljazeera
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