It's hard to be more different than Luiz Iniacio Lula da Silva and Flavio Bolsonaro. The two candidates who face each other on Sunday October 25 in the second round of the presidential election in Brazil nevertheless display the same ambition: to put an end to "illegal deforestation" in the country, particularly in the Amazon forest, 60% of which is on national territory. The outgoing left-wing president, Lula, promises to achieve this by 2030. His far-right rival, son of former president Jair Bolsonaro, ensures in his program to achieve this by... 2029.
But behind these almost identical objectives, the two men offer two radically opposed visions of the future of the largest tropical forest in the world. And it is through his destiny, sealed by the election of one or the other, that the future of Brazil, but also of the rest of the planet, is at stake. Trees in the Amazon rainforest store more than 100 billion tonnes of carbon which, if destroyed, would be released into the atmosphere, fueling rising global temperatures. A crucial role yet far from having been at the heart of the campaign.
By promising to fight against illegal deforestation, Flavio Bolsonaro does not really intend to prevent economic actors from cutting down trees to occupy the land, fears Claudio Angelo, coordinator of international policies at the Brazilian Climate Observatory. For the latter, "the only way" to believe that the far-right candidate will achieve the stated objective, "is to think that he will repeal the forest code and legalize all illegal deforestation", he analyzed for the specialized site Carbon Brief just before the first round, three weeks ago.
The powerful agro-industry sector and the farmers who depend on it, as well as the large mining companies, want to push back this last frontier of economic development and are counting on the support of the ultraliberal candidate.
“At the risk of sounding alarmist, I have continued to say that Lula’s re-election is the only thing that separates us from massive destruction of the Amazon.”
Under Lula's presidency, deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon has in fact recorded a drop of 42% over one year between 2025 and 2026, reaching its lowest level since records began in 1988. According to official data, it has fallen by 71.2% since his election in 2022. Conversely, deforestation had increased sharply during the four years of Jair Bolsonaro's mandate. (2019-2023), father of presidential candidate. To achieve this, his government had unraveled the forest code, cut funding for environmental agencies and legalized the grabbing of protected land by private companies.
However, Bolsonaro Jr. fully assumes his father's legacy. “The best way to deal with the issue of the environment is what we did during [his mandate],” he said during the campaign. Visiting the state of Para on Monday, particularly affected by deforestation, the candidate promoted the exploitation of the forest. “I am going to undertake the largest land regularization ever seen in Para. Your land will officially belong to you,” he said during a gathering of bikers, reports the daily O Globo.
"We will respect private property. You can farm, raise livestock, do whatever you want on your land, and whatever you get from it will be yours."
While Brazilian law allows landowners in the Amazon to remove up to a fifth of the area of rainforest on their land, he criticized "environmental obstacles that only exist for ideological reasons."
As an extension of his action at the head of Brazil, Lula displays a more ambitious objective, although a little ambiguous: "zero net deforestation" by 2030. This policy involves compensating, in particular through reforestation, any "legal suppression of native vegetation and the resulting greenhouse gas emissions", we can read in the climate commitments transmitted to the UN by Brazil in 2025.
Like most of his colleagues specializing in climate sciences in the Amazon, Carlos Nobre believes that "what we really have to fight for is 'zero deforestation'" quite simply. Without which the Amazon is exposed to "total risk", explains the researcher in the New York Times, who affirms that deforestation would also lead to a drop in precipitation over a large part of South America, threatening Brazilian agriculture, with consequences for world prices of crops. foodstuffs.
Failing to live up to the expectations of the international community for the Amazon, the policy promised by Lula guarantees indigenous peoples the maintenance of the instruments already deployed by his government to fight against the grabbing of the lands they claim. Contacted by a Brazilian journalist from the specialized site Mongabay, a few days before the second round, the Minister of Indigenous Peoples, Eloy Terena, assures that he is "very worried" in the event of Flavio Bolsonaro's victory.
“With the stroke of a pen, he can undo all the progress made over the past four years.”
The fears mainly concern the recognition of indigenous territories, called into question by Jair Bolsonaro, then accelerated under the Lula era. Through this process, called "demarcation", communities obtain the right to manage their own territories. If they can always choose to make their land available to companies and farmers who covet it, experience has shown that this restitution policy actively contributes to the fight against the destruction of the forest, underlines UNESCO.
Faced with stakeholders from the agricultural sector, gathered in April for an exhibition in the state of Mato Grosso, the far-right candidate promised that "none of these reserves will be demarcated", in the wake of the policy formerly pursued by his father. “The vocation of the State is production,” he said, while saying he was in favor of “the autonomy of indigenous peoples, so that they can decide what should be done on their lands.”
Marked by the violence and intimidation that marred Jair Bolsonaro's presidency, indigenous leaders actively campaigned for Lula's re-election. As the second round approached, their fears came true, as some received threats via Whatsapp, Folha de São Paulo revealed. In audio messages, “farmers declare that they will invade indigenous territories in the Amazon if Flavio Bolsonaro wins the election,” writes the Brazilian daily.
In the Amazon states, the urban populations, the majority, are increasingly critical of the fight against deforestation led by the outgoing president, explains the head of the New York Times bureau in Brazil, Adam Ellick. “People who lost their income as a result of these interventions often found themselves left to their own devices”, without “any support to make a transition to other means of subsistence, such as sustainable agriculture, for example”, he continues. “The result was growing resentment, which shifted the region to the right.”
Since October 4, the date of the first round of the presidential election, the number of fire outbreaks recorded in the forest has exploded. “It almost tripled compared to the ten days preceding the election, mainly around Manaus,” said Ane Alencar, scientific director of the Amazon Environmental Research Institute, quoted on October 15 by the Associated Press agency.
She, who expected to see the number of fires increase at this time of the year, due to the El Niño phenomenon, did not rule out the political motive. “One event made people burn more,” she suggested. Already a hard blow for this precious carbon sink, from which all of humanity benefits.
