London Climate Action Week: The future of the Amazon: New hope and the many challenges for Brazil

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Brazil is the world’s fifth-largest emitter of greenhouse gases, with almost half of Brazil’s carbon emissions coming from deforestation. Brazil is central to the success of the Paris Agreement and post-2020 global biodiversity targets.

During Brazil’s 2022 presidential elections, Lula’s renewed and ambitious commitments to the environment were a core part of his political agenda, including the commitment to zero deforestation in the Amazon.

However, due to the ongoing opposition by the National Congress to Indigenous peoples rights and the environmental agenda, there are many questions about if and how Brazil can again become a global beacon for sustainability.

As part of Global Canopy and King’s College Transnational Law Institute’s London Climate Action Week 2023 agenda, we facilitated a panel discussion to discuss the current challenges of Brazil’s climate-nature-people agenda and the role of the international community.

The panel included Marcio Astrini, Executive Secretary of the Climate Change Observatory in Brazil; Octavio Ferraz; Co-Director of the Transnational Law Institute at the King’s College; Erika Berenguer, Senior Research Associate at the Ecosystems Lab in the University of Oxford; and Cristiane Fontes, Brazil Programme Lead at Global Canopy.