Bolsonaro\u2019s government openly supported weakening environmental licensing. His environment minister, Ricardo Salles, dismissed licensing as \u201ca barrier to development\u201d and pushed for broad deregulation.<\/p>\n
Current President Luiz In\u00e1cio Lula da Silva vetoed many of its most controversial provisions in August, citing risks to Indigenous rights and environmental oversight. But in late November, the legislature overturned those vetoes and reinstated the contested sections.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is neither improving nor modernizing, it is simply deregulation,\u201d said Sarah Sax<\/a>, who analyzes Brazil\u2019s climate and human rights policies as a researcher with Climate Rights International<\/a>, a California-based nonprofit advocating for climate justice.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s happening in Brazil in ways that mirror what you\u2019re seeing around the world. These are proxy fights over democracy, human rights and institutional power,\u201d she said, noting a broader global pattern of industrial and political blocs pushing deregulation and weakening institutions designed to protect communities and ecosystems.\u00a0<\/p>\n According to analyses by the Brazilian Academy of Sciences<\/a> and other organizations, the provisions at issue will enable many projects to get permits by self-declaring compliance, without undergoing complete environmental impact assessments or third-party review.\u00a0<\/p>\n Under the law, deforested properties or land cleared without a license can be retroactively legalized without restoring the land or ecological conditions, which rewards illegal deforestation. Larger projects, like irrigation, dams and sanitation works, as well as roads and energy infrastructure, can proceed with minimal environmental scrutiny, risking more forest fragmentation and habitat destruction. And the licensing changes narrow who must be recognized and consulted during reviews, which could exclude communities without formal land titles.<\/p>\n A Human Rights Issue\u00a0<\/p>\n It\u2019s alarming that the legislature overrode the vetoes, said Astrid Puentes Ria\u00f1o<\/a>, the United Nations special rapporteur on the human right to a healthy environment. As it stands now, the law may violate Brazil\u2019s international environmental committments, she added.<\/p>\n \u201cWhat is at stake is [whether] Brazil, as a country, is able to effectively protect the environment, including all their fundamental resources,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n She noted that Brazil is not facing this problem alone.<\/p>\n \u201cI think that we, unfortunately, are seeing a wave of regressions globally toward weakened environmental impact assessments, because they\u2019re seen as obstacles for development and investment,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n But cutting reviews when science clearly shows that the planet is facing a \u201ctriple crisis of climate change, biodiversity loss and toxic contamination\u201d is a huge step in the wrong direction.<\/p>\n \u201cEnvironmental impact assessments are not a checklist in a supermarket,\u201d she said. \u201cThey are an essential element for states to prevent environmental, climate, human rights, and social impacts.\u201d<\/p>\n She emphasized that weakening environmental review isn\u2019t a technocratic tweak or political win for one side. It undermines the foundations of public health, Indigenous rights, and climate safety.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cThis is not about politics, it\u2019s about survival,\u201d she said. \u201cSome of these impacts on water, on air, on biodiversity, on people\u2019s health, are irreversible. These are not things you can fix later.\u201d<\/p>\n Climate Backlash Is Scientifically Unfounded<\/p>\n The fight over Brazil\u2019s environmental licensing law<\/a> can be seen as a microcosm of global climate policy tensions, with governments performatively signaling climate ambition at international meetings, such as COP30, while doubling down on economic nationalism by claiming there is no money for climate action at home and instead financing measures to boost development and growth.<\/p>\n Claudio Angelo, with Brazilian NGO Observat\u00f3rio do Clima, said that this false-choice paradigm was \u201ccertainly an underlying theme\u201d in the debates over the law.<\/p>\n \u201cIt has appeared in the speeches of most Congressmen who voted for the new legislation and to overturn Lula\u2019s vetoes,\u201d he said. \u201cBut, more worryingly, there was a lot of sheer disinformation.\u201d<\/p>\n The two lobbying groups that pushed for the law that weakens environmental reviews repeatedly said that the existing licensing process is too slow and thus hampers economic progress. They claimed, without proof, that thousands of projects were stuck in the permitting process.<\/p>\n \u201cBut in the end, this may have been more about hubris than anything,\u201d Angelo said. \u201cCongress did that because it could. And because the private interests most Congressmen serve don\u2019t want any regulation of any kind.\u201d<\/p>\n Even without a complete analysis, it\u2019s clear that cutting environmental reviews conflicts indirectly with Brazil\u2019s climate plans, making it more difficult to stop deforestation.<\/p>\n Farmers, miners and cattle growers have been hacking apart the Amazon Rainforest for decades. Scientists say the region is near a tipping point, beyond which it will start to emit more carbon dioxide than it absorbs and speed up global warming. Credit: NASA<\/p>\n Angelo expects some environmental groups will challenge the new law. Parts of it are subject to a 180-day waiting period, he said, so the final outcome is unclear. But a companion measure that passed as an executive order just this week, creates a fast-track permitting process for projects the government deems strategic, and it is effective immediately.<\/p>\n Puentes Ria\u00f1o said recent advisory opinions from the International Court of Justice<\/a> and the Inter-American Court of Human Rights<\/a> make it clear that states must \u201cuse all means at their disposal to prevent actions that cause significant harm\u201d to the Earth\u2019s climate.<\/p>\n A growing body of research in ecological economics shows that such false choices are mainly a political narrative used by special interest groups to justify deregulation, despite evidence showing that degrading ecosystems undermines both climate goals and economic resilience.<\/p>\n Mainstream science and climate reports, including the Sixth Assessment Report<\/a> from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services, directly contradict the idea that countries must choose between protecting ecosystems and achieving economic development.\u00a0<\/p>\n The studies show that intact forests, healthy rivers and secure Indigenous and local land rights are among the most effective and cost-efficient\u00a0climate mitigation strategies available, delivering carbon sequestration, ecosystem resilience, public health and long-term economic stability. The IPCC explicitly recognizes community-led stewardship and ecosystem protection as core pillars of climate action, not afterthoughts.<\/p>\n Those scientific realities also underpinned the 2015 Paris Agreement, which ignited more public pressure for climate action, including youth-led mass demonstrations like the Fridays for Future marches that swelled in 2019. For a short time after COP21 in Paris, climate ambition rose worldwide, pushing governments to adopt stronger targets and framing ecosystems and community rights as essential to mitigation.<\/p>\n This story is funded by readers like you.<\/p>\n Our nonprofit newsroom provides award-winning climate coverage free of charge and advertising. We rely on donations from readers like you to keep going. Please donate now to support our work.<\/p>\n Donate Now<\/a> <\/p>\n But the COVID-19 pandemic and Russia\u2019s invasion of Ukraine unleashed overlapping economic shocks that reset priorities. Governments focused on energy security, food security supply chains and inflation, creating openings for industrial and agricultural lobbies to argue that environmental rules hindered economic recovery.\u00a0<\/p>\n Those pressures dovetailed with persistent strains of economic nationalism and identity politics, strengthening political forces that frame environmental safeguards as constraints on sovereignty and growth. The result was global regulatory rollbacks, from the U.S. and Canada to mining regions in Indonesia and Australia, each framed as necessary to speed development, stabilize supply chains or simply acting out of economic self-interest.<\/p>\n Germany, for example, arrived at COP30 emphasizing its commitment to ambitious climate action. But weeks later, its new government under Chancellor Friedrich Merz pressed the European Union to weaken or delay the bloc\u2019s 2035 phaseout of gas- and diesel-fueled cars.\u00a0<\/p>\n The move mirrored Brazil\u2019s own post-COP30 reversal. In both cases, political leaders under pressure from domestic industries framed their actions as necessary to defend national interests amid economic uncertainty.<\/p>\n Why It Matters<\/p>\n Brazil\u2019s post-COP30 shift toward deregulation in the name of economic development has far-reaching implications because Amazon forests influence global climate and weather patterns, circulating vast amounts of heat and water with effects that ripple far beyond the Amazon Basin.\u00a0<\/p>\n Moisture from the rainforests creates a belt of rising, humid air that shapes rainfall patterns from the Andes to the U.S. Gulf Coast. Research shows that when large areas of the Amazon are cleared or degraded, the system weakens, shifting precipitation patterns in ways that can amplify droughts in South America and intensify rainfall extremes elsewhere.<\/p>\n Drier Amazon conditions also warm the tropical Atlantic and can change winds that shape Atlantic hurricane formation, potentially boosting the frequency or intensity of storms that strike the Caribbean and North America. Research on long-distance links in the climate system shows that Amazon drying can also reduce summer rainfall across the U.S. Midwest and Southern Plains, regions that depend on predictable precipitation for agriculture.<\/p>\n And the Amazon\u2019s role as a critical carbon sink is also at risk. Its vegetation and soils store about 150 billion to 200 billion metric tons of carbon, equivalent to about 70 to 90 years of annual U.S. fossil-fuel carbon dioxide emissions.\u00a0<\/p>\n Brazil\u2019s land-use sector is already one of the world\u2019s largest sources of climate-warming pollution. Deforestation, fires and forest degradation in the Amazon and Cerrado savanna account for 700 million to 800 million metric tons of climate-warming gases annually, equal to Germany\u2019s yearly emissions.<\/p>\n
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