Former Brazilian environment minister Marina Silva has warned that if Flávio Bolsonaro wins the presidency, he will seek to complete the "perverse project" of rampant rainforest destruction started by his jailed far-right father, Jair Bolsonaro.
Speaking exclusively to the Guardian, Silva said a second Bolsonaro presidency would spell disaster for the globally crucial Amazon ecosystem, its inhabitants, and the climate crisis.
Bolsonaro's favourite status
Flávio Bolsonaro, 45, is the favourite to beat leftwing incumbent Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva in the second round of the presidential election on 25 October. He beat Lula, 80, by more than 2 million votes in the first round last Sunday, amid a wave of anti-incumbency and anti-left sentiment that propelled a record number of far-right politicians into an already conservative congress.
Silva, a world-renowned environmentalist who served as Lula's environment minister until April, said: "I've no doubt that this time they will try to finish the perverse project they started with [Jair] Bolsonaro. If they are elected – and God, and the Brazilian people, willing they won't be – they will use their time to try to speed up as much as possible all of the regressions they can, including to keep themselves in power."
Vision for the Amazon
Silva described the Bolsonaros' vision for the Amazon as denialist: "The vision they have for the Amazon is the same vision they have for everything. They are denialists. Their vision is that the forest must be removed for economic activities. They will again encourage illegal mining, the invasion of Indigenous lands, and violence against Indigenous and Quilombola communities."
She also expressed fear that aggressive resource extraction could be turbocharged by Donald Trump's designs on Latin America, exemplified by the US commandeering Venezuela's oil reserves after the capture of Nicolás Maduro. The Bolsonaros are long-term allies of Trump, who has called Venezuela's oil "the spoils" of his brief war.
"Brazil cannot [be governed by] a political group that wants to turn itself into an American protectorate, as is the case with Venezuela today," Silva said, adding that a Flávio Bolsonaro administration would be "subservient" to the US.
Achievements at risk
Silva recalled the "scorched earth" she found when she took over a defanged and dispirited environment ministry in January 2023. Under Lula, Amazon deforestation has fallen nearly 50%, with an estimated 2,600 sq km lost this year compared with almost 11,600 sq km during Jair Bolsonaro's last year in office. Illegal miners and ranchers have been evicted from Indigenous territories, and tens of billions of dollars of international funding for rainforest protection have been restored.
Silva said those achievements are now in jeopardy. "It's deeply sad and troubling," she said. "It's just like the myth of Sisyphus. Rolling the boulder all the way up to the top and watching it fall back down. Except it won't fall on open ground – it's going to fall right on top of all of us."
She added: "Paradoxically, just at the moment when we could be about to achieve the lowest rate of deforestation [in more than a decade] and hit a once unthinkable target of zero deforestation by 2030, we face the threat of a government which … would set all of this back to square one."
Congress shift and democratic fears
Even if Flávio Bolsonaro loses, the shift to the far right in congress could prove dire for the environment in Brazil, the world's most biodiverse country. Bolsonaro's Liberal party (PL) won 19 of the 54 senate seats up for grabs and 121 of the 513 lower house seats, making it easier for lawmakers to remove environmental and Indigenous protections.
Silva, who sought a senate seat but was beaten by a former special forces police officer and another Bolsonarista politician, said: "Even with the current makeup [of congress] we've witnessed numerous setbacks." She fears lawmakers will move to "uncreate" conservation units and Indigenous territories, threatening all of Brazil's biomes, including the Atlantic Forest, the Cerrado, the Pantanal, and the Pampa.
Silva also warned that Brazil's democracy is at risk if the Bolsonaros reclaim power, with Jair, who is serving a 27-year sentence for plotting a coup after losing the 2022 election, expected to be released and made a minister. Flávio Bolsonaro has announced he would seek to "re-democratise" Brazil and change the constitution, possibly allowing longer presidential terms.
"That is a very dangerous word, because to an authoritarian mindset, what does re-democratisation mean?" Silva said. "It means democracy for them to stay in power ad infinitum; riding roughshod over constitutional rules; interfering with the logic of the separation of powers; having the power to appoint supreme court justices to mould a supreme court in their own image and likeness. In reality, they are a sort of right-wing version of what was done in Venezuela [under Maduro]. They are willing to erode our democracy from within."
Silva voiced hope that Lula can bounce back in the second round. "I believe deeply that it's possible," she said, vowing to battle to convince the more than 30 million people who did not vote in the first round of the "incalculable damage" another Bolsonaro presidency could cause. A Datafolha polling institute survey on Thursday gave Bolsonaro a 52% to 48% lead over Lula in the runoff.
Silva, who has defended the Amazon since the 1980s, vowed to fight on: "I draw my energy from insisting on living. I believe life means holding on, and the death impulse – strong as it may be – always loses to the life impulse. Look at us: we are here. Our parents and our grandparents are gone, but we made it. I truly believe this instinct to live will prevail. My hope is that it proves stronger right now, so Latin America isn't consumed by this drive for death."
