The environment in the Lula government 3 – 05/17/2023 – Maria Hermínia Tavares

Minister Marina Silva has insisted on what she considers the main difference between the two periods in which she commanded the Ministry of the Environment. The first, between 2003 and 2008, when she occupied a niche in the government, from which she built a good part of the institutions that govern the protection of our forests and biodiversity.

Today, the environmental issue stands out among the Lula government’s commitments, with its own space in different areas of the administration, including no less than 19 ministries and public banks, assuring it strong tools for action.

The winds of the world and the intense activity of groups in organized society —who denounced and resisted the dismantling of federal policies and bodies promoted by Bolsonaro’s misgovernment—were responsible for this change, the scope of which should not be underestimated.

With it, the idea of ​​sustainable development is gaining ground, interweaving immediate tasks and preparation for a future based on the use of renewable energies; economic exploitation of standing forests; infrastructure more resistant to natural disasters; less polluting industries and smart services; production and consumption of food with a lower carbon footprint; and, last but not least, reducing social distances.

In the ongoing fruitful debate, numerous proposals have emerged to be tested in order to combine facing the present risks —predatory exploitation of forests and natural resources, the advance of organized crime in the Amazon, threats to indigenous and traditional populations— with choices that ensure a less gray future. for the country and the planet.

If in the long run the environmental agenda is a win-win game, in the immediate term it necessarily imposes losses and runs counter to interests —and not just illicit ones— and visions rooted in society and the government itself.

Examples abound: the electricity transmission line that will cross indigenous land to connect Manaus to Boa Vista; Ferrogrão, which will benefit producers in the Midwest, at the cost of affecting a national park; highway projects in the North, Northeast and Midwest whose construction endangers animal species or demarcated lands; and Petrobras’ risky plan to explore for oil and gas at sea, from Amapá to Rio Grande do Norte.

Not to mention at least 22 bills pending in Congress that will certainly make controlling deforestation unfeasible.

Thus, there will be no lack of occasion to test the firmness of the government’s environmental commitments and its ability to arbitrate conflicts, in order to create political conditions for sustainable initiatives.

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