BRASÍLIA — Brazilian lawmakers are pushing a historic rollback of environmental rules that would strip protections from the Amazon — less than a week after the country wraps up hosting the U.N. climate talks.
Since last week, Brazil has welcomed representatives from almost 200 countries to this year’s U.N. climate talks in the Amazonian city of Belém. The country has used the conference to showcase President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva’s success in slashing deforestation rates in the world’s most important rainforest.
But 1,600 kilometers farther south in the capital Brasília, Lula’s opponents have a different agenda — and they are planning to use the moment after the summit ends to push through a series of changes to the law that Brazil’s Environment Minister Marina Silva told POLITICO would amount to a “severe weakening of Brazil’s environmental rules.”
The move exposes the balance of power in Brazil, where the leftist president is faced with a Congress dominated by politicians aligned with industrial interest groups, particularly the agriculture sector.
