Prominent Brazilian environmentalist Marina Silva, who was environment minister under former Brazilian president Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, commonly known as “Lula,” before breaking with his party, said she is throwing her full support behind his presidential campaign and does not rule out a role in government if he wins a third term.
Silva resigned from Lula’s government in 2008, upset by his support for major infrastructure projects in the Amazon rainforest. Their reconciliation is a high-profile endorsement to shore up his center-left coalition ahead of a first-round presidential vote on Oct. 2.
Her support for Lula also shows how even environmentalists skeptical of his ties to Brazilian agribusiness have closed ranks behind him, in an urgent push to change policies that have sent deforestation soaring under Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro.
Photo: Reuters
Silva implemented environmental policies under Lula that helped to dramatically reduce destruction of the Amazon, but she joined a chorus of green critics upset with major infrastructure projects in the rainforest, such as the Belo Monte hydropower dam.
Even with that mixed record, Lula strikes a dramatic contrast with Bolsonaro, who has sharply scaled back enforcement of environmental laws in the Amazon, while calling for more mining and farming on protected lands. Deforestation of Brazil’s rainforest has climbed to a 15-year high on his watch.
In an interview on Thursday, Silva, a three-time presidential candidate who once drew fierce criticism from Lula’s leftist Workers’ Party, said “zeroing” deforestation in the Amazon was entirely within reach, a goal even more ambitious than Lula’s stated target of “net zero” deforestation.
While net zero deforestation allows for cutting as long as an equal area is replanted elsewhere, no cutting whatsoever would be allowed under a regime of absolute zero deforestation.
“It’s perfectly possible to return to zero deforestation, reviving a plan that already worked, updating that plan, putting the budgets and teams back together, strengthening our enforcement, monitoring and management systems,” said Silva, a native of the isolated rainforest state of Acre.
Silva last week publicly endorsed Lula at an event where he committed to a series of policy proposals, including a national authority coordinating the government’s work on climate change.
Asked if she would consider accepting such a “climate czar” role, Silva left the door open.
“Talking about ministries before winning is exactly what we don’t have to do,” she said.
Lula’s campaign staff have not been shy about environmental initiatives they are looking to implement.
Reuters reported in August that his representatives were reaching out to Indonesia and the Democratic Republic of the Congo in a bid to present a united front of tropical rainforest nations at this year’s UN climate talks.
Lula has built a strong lead over Bolsonaro in most polls. If neither candidate wins a majority of votes on Oct. 2, they would face off in a second-round vote on Oct. 30.
When a hiker fell from a 55m waterfall in wild New Zealand bush, rescuers were forced to evacuate the badly hurt woman without her dog, which could not be found. After strangers raised thousands of dollars for a search, border collie Molly was flown to safety by a helicopter pilot who was determined to reunite the pet and the owner. A week earlier, an emergency rescue helicopter found the woman with bruises and lacerations after a fall at a rocky spot at the waterfall on the South Island’s West Coast. She was airlifted on March 24, but they were forced to
CONFIDENCE BOOSTER: ’After parkour ... you dare to do a lot of things that you think only young people can do,’ a 67-year-old parkour enthusiast said In a corner of suburban Singapore, Betty Boon vaults a guardrail, crawls underneath a slide, executes forward shoulder rolls and scales a steep slope, finishing the course to applause. “Good job,” the 69-year-old’s coach cheers. This is “geriatric parkour,” where about 20 retirees learned to tackle a series of relatively demanding exercises, building their agility and enjoying a sense of camaraderie. Boon, an upbeat grandmother, said learning parkour has aided her confidence and independence as she ages. “When you’re weak, you will be dependent on someone,” she said after sweating it out with her parkour classmates in suburban Toa Payoh,
Chinese dissident artist Gao Zhen (高兟), famous for making provocative satirical sculptures of former Chinese leader Mao Zedong (毛澤東), was tried on Monday over accusations of “defaming national heroes and martyrs,” his wife and a rights group said. Gao, 69, who was detained in 2024 during a visit from the US, faces a maximum three-year prison sentence, said his wife, Zhao Yaliang (趙雅良), and Shane Yi, a researcher at the Chinese Human Rights Defenders group which operates outside the nation. The closed-door, one-day trial took place at Sanhe City People’s Court in Hebei Province neighboring the capital, Beijing, and ended without a
‘TOXIC CLIMATE’: ‘I don’t really recognize Labour anymore... The idea that you can implement far-right ideas in order to stop the far right is nonsense,’ a protester said Tens of thousands of people on Saturday marched through central London to protest against the far right, weeks ahead of local elections and six months after Britain saw one of its largest far-right demonstrations. Organized by hundreds of civic groups, including trade unions, anti-racism campaigners and Muslim representative bodies, Saturday’s Together Alliance event was billed as the biggest in UK history to counter right-wing extremism. A separate pro-Palestinian march had also converged with the main rally. While organizers claimed 500,000 had turned out in total, the police gave a figure of about 50,000. Protesters carrying placards with slogans such as
RSS