{"id":226879,"date":"2023-01-09T12:00:42","date_gmt":"2023-01-09T12:00:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=226879"},"modified":"2023-01-06T03:31:55","modified_gmt":"2023-01-06T03:31:55","slug":"brazil-has-a-new-president-and-a-renewed-chance-to-save-the-amazon","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2023\/01\/brazil-has-a-new-president-and-a-renewed-chance-to-save-the-amazon\/","title":{"rendered":"Brazil Has a New President, and a Renewed Chance to Save the Amazon"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>

Tukanos from Amazon rainforest (Image by James Martins \/ CC)<\/p><\/div>\n

5 Jan 2023 – <\/em>The Amazon rainforest is often called the lungs of the planet, covering more than 3 million square miles across nine South American countries. It is an immense carbon sink, drawing carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere, storing it as biomass and releasing oxygen. Other tropical rainforests do the same, from the Congo Basin to New Guinea and Indonesian-occupied West Papua and Malaysia. But the Amazon is on a scale of its own, and, with human activity driving catastrophic global heating, protecting the climate-healing power of the Amazon is vital.<\/p>\n

Which is why the victory in Brazil\u2019s recent presidential race by Luiz In\u00e1cio Lula da Silva may be one of the most momentous events in modern world history. Known as Lula, voters returned him for a third term after he left office more than a decade ago. He has pledged to protect the Amazon and the indigenous communities that have long stewarded the forest. Lula defeated the racist, far right-wing incumbent President Jair Bolsonaro, an autocrat who made unrestrained Amazon deforestation and the elimination of protected indigenous zones a central pillar of his single-term in office. Before Lula\u2019s January 1st inauguration, Bolsonaro fled to Orlando, Florida, reportedly to the vacation home of Brazilian Jose Aldo, a champion mixed martial arts fighter.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is the first time that a Brazilian president, since the end of the dictatorship in Brazil, was not there to pass the presidential sash to the incoming president,\u201d independent journalist Michael Fox said on the Democracy Now! news hour. \u201cIt was actually this diverse group of Brazilian people \u2014 a Black trash collector, a cook, a handicap activist \u2014 who passed that sash on to Lula, and it showed the Brazilian people coming together. So it was huge.\u201d<\/p>\n

Lula was a metalworker and union organizer during Brazil\u2019s military dictatorship. A co-founder of the Workers Party, he was first elected president in 2002. During his two successive terms, policies he championed like the \u201cZero Hunger\u201d program lifted millions of Brazilians out of poverty and food insecurity. His successor, Dilma Rousseff, a Workers Party member and former guerilla, was impeached in a legislative coup in 2016. Lula himself was imprisoned in 2018 for 580 days on trumped up corruption charges. He was released when a court ruled the judge in his case was biased against him.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

The number of fires in the Amazon increased by 80% from 2018 to 2019, threatening to displace Indigenous communities. Getty Images.<\/p><\/div>\n

Bolsonaro has been called the \u201cTropical Trump,\u201d and, like Donald Trump, refused to concede his election loss, claiming that \u201conly God\u201d could remove him from office. Concerns of potential violence from Bolsonaro supporters during Lula\u2019s inauguration prompted the Brazilian Supreme Court to ban legal firearms from the capital city of Brasilia until after the event.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe last few years, we undoubtedly lived in one of the worst periods in our history, an era of shadows, doubt and a lot of suffering,\u201d Lula said in his inauguration speech. \u201cBut this nightmare came to an end with the sovereign vote in the most important election since the country\u2019s return to democracy, an election that has shown the Brazilian people\u2019s commitment to democracy and its institutions.\u201d<\/p>\n

Lula\u2019s government is a radical departure from Bolsonaro\u2019s authoritarianism. Key ministerial appointments include Goldman Prize winner Marina Silva, a defender of the Amazon rainforest, as Minister of the Environment and Climate Change; Black activist, journalist and educator Anielle Franco as Minister of Racial Equality \u2013 in 2018, Anielle\u2019s sister Marielle Franco, a human rights activist and member of Rio de Janeiro\u2019s city council, was assassinated; and S\u00f4nia Guajajara as Brazil\u2019s first-ever Minister for Indigenous Peoples.<\/p>\n

In September, 2019, S\u00f4nia Guajajara was in New York City, marching in the youth-led climate strike.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Amazon is burning,\u201d she told Democracy Now! \u201cLots of territories are on fire. We attribute the increase in the fires to the rhetoric of the government of Jair Bolsonaro, that incites attacks, that incites invasions and incites deforestation. The practices of the Bolsonaro government are consolidating this government as the biggest enemy of indigenous people and the environment.\u201d She continued, \u201cWe\u2019re in a time of awakening\u2026to the urgent need to fight for the environment. For that, it\u2019s necessary for people to have political and ecological consciousness, to call out and pressure the governments in their countries in order to adopt sustainable policies.\u201d<\/p>\n

Brazil is the largest country in Latin America and the 12th-largest economy in the world. Lula\u2019s presidency with its historically diverse cabinet opens the door to progressive change, to challenge the rising global tide of authoritarianism and fascism. Saving the Amazon rainforest is one of Lula\u2019s principal goals, but the task is too large and too urgent for one nation or one administration alone. The Amazon is at a tipping point, and we all must tackle this existential threat, together.<\/p>\n

___________________________________________<\/em><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a> <\/em>Amy Goodman is the host of \u201c<\/em>Democracy Now!\u201d a daily international TV\/radio news hour airing on more than 900 stations in North America. She is the author of <\/em>Breaking the Sound Barrier, released in paperback and now a <\/em>New York Times best-seller.<\/em><\/p>\n

Denis Moynihan is the co-founder of <\/em>Democracy Now! Since 2002, he has participated in the organization\u2019s worldwide distribution, infrastructure development, and the coordination of complex live broadcasts from many continents. He lives in Denver where he is developing a new noncommercial community radio station.<\/em><\/p>\n

The original content of this program is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n

Go to Original \u2013 democracynow.org<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

5 Jan 2023 – The victory in Brazil\u2019s presidential race by Luiz In\u00e1cio Lula da Silva may be one of the most momentous events in modern world history. Lula returned for a third term and has pledged to protect the Amazon and the indigenous communities that have long stewarded the forest.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":196031,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[180],"tags":[2302,536,1003,547,239,534,1620,866,541,1134,1200,1255,2137],"class_list":["post-226879","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-brics","tag-amazon","tag-amazonia","tag-brasil","tag-brazil","tag-brics","tag-indigenous","tag-indigenous-culture","tag-indigenous-rights","tag-latin-america-caribbean","tag-lula-da-silva","tag-natures-rights","tag-rain-forests","tag-south-america"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/226879","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=226879"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/226879\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/196031"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=226879"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=226879"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=226879"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}