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This story was originally published by Grist and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration.

When Brazilian president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva took office in January 2023, he inherited environmental protection agencies in shambles and deforestation at a 15-year high. His predecessor, Jair Bolsonaro, had dismantled regulations and gutted institutions tasked with enforcing environmental laws. Lula set out to reverse these policies and to put Brazil on a path to end deforestation by 2030.

Environmental protection agencies have been allowed to resume their work. Between January and November of 2023, the government issued 40 percent more infractions against illegal deforestation in the Amazon when compared to the same period in 2022, when Bolsonaro was still in office. Lula’s government has confiscated and destroyed heavy equipment used by illegal loggers and miners, and placed embargoes on production on illegally cleared land. Lula also reestablished the Amazon Fund, an international pool of money used to support conservation efforts in the rainforest. Just this week, at the G20 Summit, outgoing US President Joe Biden pledged $50 million to the fund.

Indeed, almost two years into Lula’s administration, the upward trend in deforestation has been reversed. In 2023, deforestation rates fell by 62 percent in the Amazon and 12 percent in Brazil overall (though deforestation in the Cerrado, Brazil’s tropical savannas, increased). So far in 2024, deforestation in the Amazon has fallen by another 32 percent.

Throughout this year, Brazilians also bore witness to the effects of climate change in a new way. In May, unprecedented floods in the south of the country impacted over 2 million people, displacing hundreds of thousands and leaving at least 183 dead. Other regions are now into their second year of extreme drought, which led to yet another intense wildfire season. In September, São Paulo and Brasília were shrouded in smoke coming from fires in the Amazon and the Cerrado.

And yet, despite the government’s actions, environmental protections and Indigenous rights are still under threat. Lula is governing alongside the most pro-agribusiness congress in Brazilian history, which renders his ability to protect Brazil’s forests and Indigenous peoples in the long term severely constrained.

“I do believe that the Lula administration really cares about climate change,” said Belen Fernandez Milmanda, Assistant Professor of Political Science and International Studies........

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