AS/COA Insider: Cecilia Tornaghi on Lula’s Global Environmental Policy

Since winning Brazil’s runoff presidential election, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva has hit the ground running to shape his third term in Planalto. One of his first moves was announcing that he would attend the COP27 in Egypt, sending a signal that the environmental issues could be a major issue for his administration.

“The world of environmentalism is very eager to hear what Lula has to say,” says Cecilia Tornaghi, managing editor of Americas Quarterly and a senior director for policy at AS/COA. She discusses what Lula might announce in Sharm el-Shiekh, what it will take for Brazil to rebuild its environmental infrastructure, and how the environment will factor into Lula’s global leadership. 

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• Hear Cecilia Tornaghi speak with NPR about Lula’s victory.

 AS/COA Online: In his first international trip since winning Brazil's runoff election, Lula will travel to Egypt for COP27. What's the significance of this trip? How do you see him differing from the outgoing government on environmental issues? 

Cecilia Tornaghi: It’s hard to overstate the significance of President-elect Lula heading to Egypt to join COP27 in terms of signaling a U-turn on Brazil’s environmental direction and its policies on the environment. Of course, there’s a lot of focus on the Amazon rainforest and deforestation specifically, but Brazil has several other environmental priorities, including other biomes, clean energy, and biodiversity. 

The world of environmentalism is very eager to hear what Lula has to say. Everyone is hopeful that this U-turn to revamp completely Brazil’s environmental policy, which he already announced that he would do, will actually come to fruition. They hope he will be able to actually implement and act on all these ideas and expectations that the world has for Brazil when it comes not only to its own environmental conservation and policies, but its global leadership on environmental issues. 

AS/COA Online: While at COP27, there’s a discussion that Lula might revive an idea for an alliance of countries with significant rainforest that would, as a start, involve Indonesia, the Democratic Republic of Congo, and Brazil, as they are three countries that account for over half of the world's rainforests. What's the goal for this plan? 

Tornaghi: This is an interesting idea. Someone coined this idea as the “Rainforest OPEC,” which is ironic because OPEC is an oil and fossil fuel group. In any case, it’s very interesting and necessary. These three countries did meet together at COP26, but nothing much has actually happened since. We actually saw numbers of deforestation in all three countries worsen.  

Right now, the idea is to revamp this conversation and actually create a group that can negotiate on issues like carbon credits, climate financing, and adaptation financing by creating a common ground for these negotiations. This could be a very powerful group if Lula goes beyond this and holds a global summit in Brazil next year, which is what he’s saying he wants to do.  

A group that can negotiate together on these fronts is a really powerful idea. Of course, its viability depends a lot on the political powers to be, and it remains to be seen how much they can actually pull together. There are also very powerful industries that still have a vision that they need to cut forests further to be able to continue to grow their production, be it palm oil or cattle in the case of Brazil. This mind frame is still present in all these countries, so whether we can change the culture around conservation is a bigger challenge than just talking together and negotiating. 

There is also a lot of talk about collaboration among the Amazonian countries themselves, which already have an organization, but that’s not really had a lot of impact at this point in time. Lula is talking about reenforcing its work with Colombia, Peru, Bolivia, Venezuela, and Ecuador in terms of the Amazon itself, in addition to bringing others into that discussion. It’s not just about the countries that house rainforests protecting them; it’s a global responsibility for all countries to support this effort.