Brazil’s post-election challenge: What President Lula needs to change to keep the Amazon forest standing (commentary)

With Brazil´s 25 October election, Amazonia narrowly escaped a catastrophic threat. Now that Flávio Bolsonaro has been defeated and President Lula reelected, those concerned with the future of Amazonia must face what needs to be done to avoid the various still-pending threats to the region. These include the very real possibility of the forest collapsing from the combined effect of ongoing global climate change from greenhouse gas emissions (see here and here), regional climate change from deforestation (see here and here) and forest degradation as from logging, fire and edge effects (see here and here).

Climate change

Like the Amazon forest, global climate is also fast approaching a tipping point (see here and here). Global warming is close to escaping from human control, leading to a “runaway greenhouse” with temperatures shooting upward even if humans reduce their “direct” emissions from fossil fuels and deforestation to zero, while forest fires, soil and ocean warming and other “indirect” anthropogenic sources fuel ever more warming to create a “hothouse Earth.” If the climate tipping point is crossed before the Amazon forest collapses, the changed climate would quickly destroy the remaining forest, and, conversely, if the forest were to collapse first, the resulting greenhouse gas emissions would quickly push the climate system past its tipping point. The two threats are therefore intimately interconnected.

Brazil would be devastated, along with most of the world. Mass mortality of the human population would eclipse virtually all other concerns. For a limited time, we can withstand temperatures a few degrees above our body temperature of 37°C thanks to our capacity to sweat, but the projected heat waves would greatly exceed these limits (see here and here). We have no other choice but to quickly cut our net annual emissions to zero, and that requires stopping both the burning of fossil fuels and the emission of forest carbon through deforestation and forest degradation. Brazil is critical to this battle on all three fronts: fossil fuels, deforestation and forest degradation.

Fossil fuels

On the fossil-fuel front, Brazil has had a positive role in urging other countries to “transition away” from fossil fuels, but this is not matched by Brazil either quickly ending its own dependence on fossil fuels or by eschewing the opening of new oil and gas fields that initiate an economic process leading to continued fossil-fuel use worldwide far beyond the time when all such use must end. Unfortunately, President Lula’s current administration shows no sign of changing course on fossil fuels. The current minister of Mines and Energy famously stated that Brazil will extract petroleum “until Brazil reaches an HDI [Human Development Index] at the level of the industrialized countries.” The head of Petrobras (Brazil’s government oil company) has stated that there is no intention to replace fossil fuels with non-emitting sources such wind and solar, but only to use these sources to “add to” what would continue to be obtained from fossil fuels being burned at least at their current levels. Lula himself stated with reference to the notorious planned “mouth of the Amazon” offshore oilfields that “we will not throw away any chance to make this country grow,” which, since the country will aways want to grow, represents a license to extract oil forever.

Political courage would be needed for Lula to end his support for the “Mouth of the Amazon” project, given the political role of the current head of the Brazilian Senate, who represents the state expecting a bonanza from the project and who Lula’s party supports for reelection to head the Senate in 2027. The current estimate is that the “Mouth of the Amazon” project will take seven years to begin producing oil a commercial scale, after which five years will be needed to pay off the investment and, since no one will want to stop with zero profit, oil extraction would be sure to continue for many years thereafter. It was this economic difference between opening new oil and gas fields versus continuing to extract from existing fields that led the International Energy Agency to declare in 2021 that no new oil and gas fields should be opened anywhere in the world.

Deforestation

Command-and-control

On the deforestation front, despite the good news of record low deforestation rates compared to past years, a series of underlying forces must be addressed if the threat of deforestation is to be contained. The command-and-control actions of the Ministry of Environment and Climate Change are essential, although they are threatened by recent actions of the current National Congress (see here and here) and are likely to be further curtailed by the even more anti-environmental congress that will be seated in January 2027. Particularly critical is bill 2564/2025, which would essentially end deforestation control by prohibiting the use of satellite data for applying fines for illegal deforestation and by requiring giving prior warning before on-site inspections; the bill has been approved in the Chamber of Deputies and awaits a decision in the Senate. Even if command-and-control were allowed to continue at the level of efficiency that produced the deforestation declines that are now being celebrated, the underlying forces driving deforestation must be addressed to ensure the future of the Amazon forest. The changes needed will require political courage.

BR-319 Highway

Most emblematic is the BR-319 (Manaus-Porto Velho) highway, which Lula made a show of supporting in the lead-up to the election. Lula’s Ministry Transportation began paving the highway on 14 September (11 days before the election), despite not having a license to do so from the environmental agency (IBAMA) in the Ministry of Environment and Climate Change. The rather amazing rationale is that this is only “maintenance” rather than “reconstruction.” Regardless, the paving could be done without much delay if provisions were invoked from the “General Law of Licensing” (Law 15.190/2025), better known as the “Law of Devastation,” that the current National Congress passed in 2025 (see here and here). The most serious impacts of BR-319 are not even mentioned in the environmental impact assessment or in the political discourse, namely the 1320 km of planned Amazonas state government roads that would connect to BR-319 and open the vast Trans-Purus forest block to the west of the highway to deforestation, logging and a massive oil and gas project (see here, here, here, here and here). The opening of this area to deforestation and degradation would substantially increase the risk of this critical forest area collapsing.

Subsidizing of agriculture and ranching

Another key area needing political courage to address is the government’s subsidizing of agriculture and ranching, which are key drivers of Amazon deforestation. The bulk of the subsidized credit goes to large ranches and plantations, rather than to small family operations, thus not only stimulating more deforestation by the large actors themselves but also stimulating the replacement of families in settlement areas with large landholdings, resulting in the smallholders who sell their land migrating to new frontiers and deforesting there. Subsidized loans are given by government banks at interest rates lower than what the government pays to finance itself. There is also a heavy subsidy through periodic bailouts where loans are forgiven or heavily discounted when crops fail, as during major droughts.

The replacement of pasture by soy, known by the euphemism “transformation” (transformação), receives the highest level of subsidized credit under the Lula administration’s massive “harvest plans.” This “transformation” is a major driver of Amazon deforestation, including when it occurs in the Cerrado (central-Brazilian savanna) area outside of the Amazon. When land becomes more valuable for soy than for pasture, the cattle ranchers do not transform themselves into soy planters but rather sell their now-valuable land to soy planters and use the proceeds of the sales to buy and deforest much larger areas of cheap rainforest land on new Amazonian frontiers, such as that on the BR-319 highway (see here and here). Each hectare of pasture converted to soy therefore results in several hectares of deforestation elsewhere.

Land tenure “regularization”

Land tenure is another critical issue affecting deforestation. Brazil is practically the only country in the world where one can invade government land and expect to get a land title. The legalizing of these claims, both of small squatters (posseiros) and large “land grabbers” (grileiros), leads to an endless cycle of future invasions and “amnesties.” Deforestation in the invaded land is partly motivated as a strategy to justify legalizing the claim, but legalizing these claims does not result in reducing deforestation. In addition to stimulating additional invasions, the rate of deforestation increases within each landholding that is legalized, as shown by data from landholdings legalized under the “Terra Legal” program in Lula’s earlier administrations.

Lula’s campaign platform, known as the “plan of government,” repeatedly promised land-tenure “regularization.” “Regularization” is the euphemism for legalizing illegal claims in government land. It is misleading, as it implies that the claimants have a legitimate right to the land and only lack documents due to government inefficiency. This would be the case for the traditional riverside residents (ribeirinhos) who have lived in government land without documents for centuries, but these cases represent an insignificantly small part of the land being legalized and also represent a population that is covered by other programs.

Lula has stated that he wants to create a “shelf” (prateleira) of undesignated public land, known as “terras devolutas” (vacant lands), to distribute. The largest area of undesignated public land in Brazil is exactly in the area to be opened by the roads planned to connect to BR-319 (see here and here). While Lula’s political discourse always emphasizes smallholders, in practice larger areas are legalized for ranchers, and the definition of “small” for government programs in the Amazon has continually increased, from 100 ha until 2004, then to 200, 400, and in 2017 to 1500 ha. Proposals in the congress would increase it still further to 2500 ha.

The question of whether and when Brazil will end the system of legalizing illegal claims to government land is fundamental to the future of deforestation. If the current system continues, it will only end when the last hectare of land becomes private property and the last tree is cut. All the remaining undesignated public lands need to be converted to conservation units that do not allow private properties (i.e., not including Environmental Protection Areas, known as APAs). Conservation units can include those in the “sustainable use” category, such as extractive reserves, but only for traditional residents who have lived in these areas for generations.

The most difficult question with respect to ending the legalization of land claims is the removal of the illegal claimants, which is costly both financially and politically. The alternative of leaving them in possession of the government land defeats the purpose of ending this threat to the forest. As an example, in 2023 the illegal deforestation of 5600 ha in an illegally claimed area in undesignated public land in the southern part of Amazonas state led to a fine of R$292 million (US$59 million) and the requirement that the offender implant environmental recuperation projects in the deforested land. Such fines are rarely paid in practice, but, more importantly, leaving the rancher in possession of the land means the invader only needs to wait patiently for the opportunity to legalize the claim and/or resume deforesting.

The logic of legalization is extraordinary, given that what is being legalized is the stealing of land that belongs to the Brazilian government and people. It is as if someone who robs a bank and is later caught is told by a judge “you can keep the money if you just sign this form stating that you will obey the laws from now on.” Removing invaders must have a strict policy of not granting any indemnification or other benefits to the invaders, while, at the same time, providing for genuinely poor invaders by either moving them to a settlement on already-deforested land elsewhere or to a city with appropriate provisions for training and transition to an urban livelihood.

Forest degradation

On the forest degradation front the critical question is logging, including legal logging in approved forest management projects. Illegal logging is widespread (see here and here), and there is wide agreement that this must be stopped through command and control. Forest management, always described as “sustainable,” is a more delicate question, but one that must be faced. Forest management for timber in Amazona is not sustainable for various reasons. One that could be fixed is the existence of loopholes in the regulations allowing the managers to shortcut the harvest cycle. Theoretically, management is designed to be sustainable by allowing each hectare of forest to recover between harvests, while supplying a constant flow of income as successive hectares ae harvested each year. For example, in a 35-year cycle (the most common one under current regulations), the area is divided into 35 parcels of equal area, with one to be harvested each year, after which the next cycle will harvest what has grown, harvesting the parcels in the same order. In fact, however, forest managers are often able to obtain permission to harvest the entire area in the first few years, theoretically leaving the forest to remain untouched for the remainder of the cycle before another cycle begins (For an example from a large project in Acre, see here). In the state of Amazonas, “small” projects with up to 100 ha to be managed can harvest the entire area in the first year. From the point of view of the landowner this is financially unsustainable, as it requires waiting many years with no income before another cycle can begin. In practice, of course, it is more likely that the area will be deforested instead of waiting for another cycle.

A second and essentially intractable problem is that the supposedly “sustainable” management systems are financially unsustainable beyond the first cycle. The valuable commercial trees grow at a rate that is too slow to recuperate commercially viable volumes in a period such as 35 years. This unsustainability was shown in a study of 800 forest management plans in Pará, where the researchers concluded that “We find no evidence that the post-logging timber species composition and total value of forest stands recovers beyond the first-cut, suggesting that the commercially most valuable timber species become predictably rare or economically extinct in old logging frontiers.” In a detailed analysis of the economics of forest management, a who’s who of forest management researchers concluded that: “Under current logging regulations and the current concession area (mean logging intensity of 15–20 m³ha^–1, a harvest cycle of 35 years and an initial commercial timber volume proportion of 20%), timber production can be maintained only for a single cutting cycle (35 years). Only the scenario with a logging intensity of 10 m³ha^-1 every 60 years with a 90% initial proportion of commercial timber species can be considered as sustainable.” These factors together make the management totally unsustainable economically and far beyond the reach of any potential advancement in management practices to reverse the situation. Fundamentally, the rate of growth is insufficient to compete with other investment opportunities for the managers, including starting a new first-cycle management project elsewhere (see here, here and here).

There is also a physical barrier to the sustainability of forest management. This is the effect of selective logging on the risk and severity of forest fires. If an area has been logged, it is more likely to catch fire during a major drought, and if it does catch fire, the dead wood left in the forest from logging will make the fire hotter and kill more trees. Together, these two effects of logging on forest fires have been shown to more than double the biomass loss as compared to the logging itself. All forest management plans simply assume that assume that the forest will never catch fire, allowing successive cycles of harvesting. Unfortunately, this is not true, and the logging often serves as the starting point of a vicious circle of repeated fires, each fire making it more likely that the area will burn again, ending in complete destruction of the forest (see here, here and here).

Sooner or later, wood will have to be supplied from plantations. However, as long as the forest is available to harvest, extracting the trees that have grown for centuries free of charge from the viewpoint of the managers, logging will be the cheapest way to supply wood products. Brazil has no plan to “transition away” from forest management. Lula’s campaign platform lists granting 1.6 million hectares of forest management concessions as a conservation achievement of his current term in office. Brazil’s Climate Plan includes forest management as a proposed climate mitigation measure.

Conclusion

Avoiding the disaster of another four years of Bolsonaro government has been top-of-mind for many, but now attention must turn to the many ways that the Lula government must change to avoid collapse of the Amazon forest and a global climate catastrophe.

Philip M. Fearnside is a research professor at the National Institute for Research in Amazonia (INPA), Manaus, Amazonas, Brazil.

Header image: Daybreak over a tributary of the Amazon River. Photo by Rhett Ayers Butler.

This article is an updated translation of a text by the author that will be available in Portuguese on Amazônia Real. Amazônia Real, a major source of information on Amazonia, will be closing its doors on 15 November due to lack of funding. Its website will continue to be accessible but will not be maintained. Philip Fearnside’s texts are also available at https://philip.inpa.gov.br.

Citations

Cite this article

Philip M. Fearnside (2026). Brazil’s post-election challenge: What President Lula needs to change to keep the Amazon forest standing (commentary). Mongabay Conservation news. DOI: https://doi.org/10.66709/news-335489