Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva has pursued a delicate balancing act between promoting green initiatives and expanding extractive industries that will persist if he is reelected, but the election of a right-wing president would shift priorities toward deregulation and alignment with the United States and away from environmental protection and geopolitical neutrality. After taking office for a third term at the start of 2023, Lula indicated a break from the environmental rollbacks of his predecessor, President Jair Bolsonaro. Among other things, Lula's leftist government restored deforestation monitoring, reactivated the Amazon Fund after a four-year freeze and appointed Marina Silva, one of Brazil's most recognized environmentalists, as head of the environment ministry. On the international stage, Brazil leveraged successive multilateral presidencies to position itself as a key partner in global climate governance at a moment when climate action was retreating under U.S. President Donald Trump's skepticism. But Brasilia's various...
