- Brazil’s President Lula apparently lives in a “disinformation space” surrounded by ministers promoting projects that destroy the Amazon Rainforest and lock in petroleum extraction for decades to come, a new opinion piece argues.
- Among these projects are the BR-319 highway and its associated side roads; the distribution of government land to known deforesters; and opening new oilfields at the mouth of the Amazon River.
- Lula’s support for these proposals is leading Brazil to a climate catastrophe that would devastate the country, the author writes, and the two key ministers who should be the ones to explain to the president the consequences of these projects are apparently not penetrating Lula’s disinformation space.
- This post is a commentary. The views expressed are those of the author, not necessarily of Mongabay.
Brazil’s President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva lives in a “disinformation space,” to use the term coined by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy to describe U.S. President Donald Trump. Lula is surrounded by sources of constant disinformation on environmental matters, such as his minister of transportation, the minister of mines and energy, and the head of Petrobras, Brazil’s state-owned oil company.
Who can tell President Lula, without mincing words, that he is leading Brazil on a suicidal path to a climate disaster? Brazil would be devastated if a tipping point is passed and global warming escapes from human control, which is very close to happening (see here, here and here). President Lula apparently has no idea of the climatic consequences of his promoting projects such as reconstruction of the BR-319 (Manaus-Porto Velho) highway and its side roads that would open vast areas of Amazon forest to deforestation (see here and here); his plan for distributing the Amazon’s “undesignated” government land (“terras devolutas”) to deforesters (see here and here) — a part of the major driver of deforestation that is euphemistically termed “regularization,” meaning the legalization of illegal land claims (see here and here); or the notorious plan for offshore oil drilling in the mouth of the Amazon River that, in addition to its risk of uncontrollable oil spills, would lock in petroleum extraction for decades to come (see here and here).
Marina Silva, who struggles heroically for the environment as minister of environment and climate change, apparently has little voice on matters wider than the strict purview of her ministry, especially enforcing existing environmental regulations such as those prohibiting unauthorized deforestation. She has, for example, declined to take a position on energy policy on the grounds that authority for this rests with other parts of the government. On the BR-319 highway and the mouth-of-the-Amazon oil plan she has made clear that her ministry’s role is limited to technical rulings on whether licensing protocols have been followed; although in both cases the licensing covers a larger geographical areas than does the licensing for most projects, the decisions do not involve a judgement on overarching issues such as the implications of these projects for climate change (see here and here).
The minister of science, technology and innovation, Luciana Santos, should at least theoretically have a voice in these matters. As a representative of Brazil’s scientific community, she has a certain responsibility to represent that community’s conclusions on important issues facing Brazil. I can testify that a massive majority of Brazil’s scientific community is opposed to the three projects mentioned above, in addition to various other government projects that imply destruction in Amazonia in the name of supposed development (see here and here). A key question, therefore, is what the minister of science, technology and innovation is telling President Lula.
Compared to the ministers who form President Lula’s disinformation space, the minister of science, technology and innovation has relatively little access to the president’s ear. However, she has just had a golden opportunity: a trip to Moscow and Beijing with Lula in the presidential airplane.
While the minister’s trip was underway, I had the rare opportunity to speak with her interim replacement during a ceremonial event of the Brazilian Academy of Sciences. When I asked what the minister tells President Lula about the three disastrous projects mentioned above, the answer was that these are “complex issues” and the minister is “very concerned” with sustainable development, revealing in just a few words that the minister is not telling President Lula what he needs to know.
Unfortunately, the government projects in question cannot be turned into “sustainable development” by implanting governance measures (e.g., see here, here and here). The relevant question is one of “yes” or “no” — that is, should these projects go forward or not — and dodging it indicates that there is no sign that President Lula’s disinformation space will be penetrated.
This article is an updated translation of a text by the author that is available in Portuguese on Amazônia Real.
Banner image: Drone view of flooded forest in the Amazon. Photo by Rhett A. Butler for Mongabay.
See a related commentary by this writer:
Will Brazil’s President Lula wake up to the climate crisis? (commentary)
Citations:
Fearnside, P. M. (2022). Amazon environmental services: Why Brazil’s Highway BR-319 is so damaging. Ambio, 51(6), 1367-1370. doi:10.1007/s13280-022-01718-y
Fearnside, P. (2017). Deforestation of the Brazilian Amazon. Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Environmental Science. doi:10.1093/acrefore/9780199389414.013.102
Fearnside, P. M., & Filho, W. L. (2025). COP 30: Brazilian policies must change. Science, 387(6740), 1237-1237. doi:10.1126/science.adu9113
Pereira, C. C., Rodrigues, D. J., Salm, R., & Fearnside, P. M. (2025). Amazon projects pose risks to Brazil and the world. BioScience. doi:10.1093/biosci/biaf002
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