Brazilian President Lula to speak on climate at UN, but Amazon fires in Brazil undermine his message

RIO DE JANEIRO — Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva is expected to appeal to the international community Tuesday to fight climate change. It remains to be seen whether he will address the fires ravaging Brazil’s rainforest and criticism of his government’s environmental stewardship.

The Brazilian Amazon saw 38,000 fires last month, the most since 2010, according to data from the Brazilian Space Institute. September is on track to repeat that heinous feat. Smoke is suffocating residents in many cities, including the metropolis of Sao Paulo, thousands of miles away.

Lula has portrayed the fires as the result of criminal activity and proposed tougher penalties for environmental offenders. But implementation of the law has been hampered by a six-month strike at environmental regulator Ibama, which ended in August — three months after his administration became aware of the dramatically increased risk of fires amid a historic drought.

At the same time, members of his cabinet have offered conflicting views on environmental and energy policies. And Lula’s rhetoric about exploiting oil reserves near the mouth of the Amazon River has worried environmentalists who want Brazil to lead a global transition to clean energy. This month, he promised to build a road in the Amazon that experts warn will lead to deforestation.

When Lula was president, between 2003 and 2010, he talked nonstop about climate change, presenting Brazil as a model of conservation for the future and accusing rich countries of polluting the planet without helping developing countries preserve their forests. And after taking office in 2023, after pledging to protect the environment, his administration managed to reduce illegal deforestation in the Amazon by 22% in its first year.

But now his calls for awareness of the need for collective environmental action could be heard differently, says Brazilian political consultant Thomas Traumann.

“Lula has always come to international meetings with a lot to say, and many have called him an environmentalist. This time, that won’t be true,” Traumann said. “We can’t say that his administration is responsible for all these fires. They have a lot of support locally. But some of these events would never have happened if the Ibama strike hadn’t lasted so long.”

On Friday, Lula announced that anyone caught setting fire to forests would be fined up to $1,800 per hectare. He also announced additional spending of up to 500 million reais ($90 million) to fight fires across the country.

The Brazilian president did not change his tone from recent years when he spoke Sunday at a pre-General Assembly summit in New York.

“To backtrack on our commitments is to jeopardize everything we have worked so hard to build,” he said. “The Sustainable Development Goals have been the greatest diplomatic undertaking of recent years, and they are destined to become our greatest collective failure.”

The next day, Energy Minister Alexandre Silveira told an oil conference in Rio de Janeiro that he was “absolutely convinced” that Brazil would exploit offshore oil reserves near the Amazon.

Environmentalist Tica Minami said at a protest outside the oil conference that Lula’s administration “has sent mixed signals in its policies.”

“It is not just the executive branch, it is the Brazilian government as a whole that must prioritize environmental protection,” she said. “Our government must show courage and do what is right for the environment and its people. But companies also have a great responsibility. They are the ones who profit from the destruction of the environment.”