To Save the Amazon, Lula Must Think Like a Capitalist
Brazil needs to offer a viable business plan to the farmers and ranchers who live off the rainforest and tropical savannas, starting with carbon credits.
To not burn, you have to earn.
Photographer: Michael Dantas/AFP via Getty Images
Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva has green cred. Joining the global climate summit at Sharm El-Sheikh last November to the cry of “Brazil is back!,” the president-elect had no trouble convincing the world’s environmental intelligentsia that he could deliver on the promise to end deforestation in the Amazon by the end of the decade.
He had gotten so close already. Forest-clearing in the Amazon declined by about 80% between 2004 and 2012, during his first two terms in the presidency and the first couple of years under his handpicked successor, Dilma Rousseff.