Category Archives: Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva

Amazon leaders fail to commit to end deforestation by 2030

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Eight South American presidents including Brazil’s Lula say rich countries need to pledge more resources to help protect rainforest

Amazon leaders have called on rich countries to help them develop a Marshall-style plan to protect the world’s largest rainforest – but stopped short of committing to zero deforestation across the biome by 2030 amid divisions over oil extraction.

In a joint declaration at the end of a two-day summit in the Brazilian city of Belém on Wednesday, the eight South American countries that are home to the Amazon rainforest said ensuring its survival could not be solely up to them, as resources from the forest were consumed globally.

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Brazilian president Lula pledges ‘new Amazon dream’ at rainforest summit

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Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva sets out ambitious programme to repair damage done by Bolsonaro and tackle environmental crime

The Brazilian president, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, has vowed to haul the Amazon out of centuries of violence, economic “plundering” and environmental devastation and into “a new Amazon dream”, at the start of a major regional summit on the world’s largest rainforest.

Addressing South American leaders gathered in the Brazilian city of Belém, Lula offered a bold blueprint for the future of the Amazon, a 6.7m sq km region that is home to nearly 50 million people spread across eight countries and one territory.

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Leaders of Amazon nations gather in Brazil for summit on rainforest’s future

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Conclave represents handbrake turn in Brazilian government policy since Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva took power

The leaders of Amazon nations including Brazil, Colombia and Peru have gathered in the Brazilian city of Belém for a rare conclave about the future of the world’s largest rainforest amid growing concern over the global climate emergency.

The environmental summit – convened by Brazil’s leftist president, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva – represents a handbrake turn in Brazilian government policy after four years of Amazon destruction and international isolation under the country’s previous leader, Jair Bolsonaro.

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Brazil: at least 45 killed in string of police operations in three states

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Ten people were killed in Rio favela and 19 people reportedly died in state of Bahia, while death toll rose to 16 in São Paulo region

At least 45 people have been killed in a string of police operations across three Brazilian states, in a particularly bloody week even for Brazil – a country notorious for its police violence.

Ten people were killed during an operation by civil and military police against drug traffickers into the Complexo da Penha favela in Rio de Janeiro on Wednesday morning, with residents saying that heavy gunfire began at 3am.

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Amazon deforestation falls over 60% compared with last July, says Brazilian minister

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Marina Silva welcomes progress but says climate crisis means upcoming regional summit needs to produce real action

Deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon fell by at least 60% in July compared to the same month last year, the environment minister, Marina Silva, has told the Guardian.

The good news comes ahead of a regional summit that aims to prevent South America’s largest biome from hitting a calamitous tipping point.

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EU to invest €45bn in Latin America and Caribbean

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Package includes projects to extract minerals, electrify bus fleets and help protect Amazon rainforest

EU leaders in Brussels have announced €45bn (£39bn) in investments to Latin America and the Caribbean, some of which will speed the shift to clean energy, but made little headway thawing a frozen trade deal that critics say will further degrade the Amazon rainforest.

The EU-Celac summit, the first of its kind since 2015, aimed to bring the EU closer to Latin American and Caribbean countries. Disagreements over how to refer to the war in Ukraine in the final text soured negotiations.

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Amazon facing ‘urgent’ drug crisis after gutting of protections, says narcotics chief

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Brazilian government warning comes as UN report says that flourishing organized crime groups are driving a boom in environmental devastation

The Brazilian government’s drug policy chief has admitted that the rapid advance of drug factions into the Amazon rainforest has produced a “a very difficult situation” in the region, as a UN report warned that flourishing organized crime groups were driving a boom in environmental devastation.

Marta Machado, the national secretary for drug affairs, said the previous administration’s intentional dismantling of Brazil’s environmental and Indigenous protection agencies had created a dangerous vacuum in the Amazon which had been occupied by powerful crime syndicates from Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo.

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Destruction of world’s pristine rainforests soared in 2022 despite Cop26 pledge

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An area of primary rainforest the size of Switzerland was felled last year suggesting world leaders’ commitment to halt and reverse deforestation by 2030 is failing

An area the size of Switzerland was cleared from Earth’s most pristine rainforests in 2022, despite promises by world leaders to halt their destruction, new figures show.

From the Bolivian Amazon to Ghana, the equivalent of 11 football pitches of primary rainforest were destroyed every minute last year as the planet’s most carbon-dense and biodiverse ecosystems were cleared for cattle ranching, agriculture and mining, with Indigenous forest communities forced from their land by extractive industries in some countries.

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Dom Phillips and Bruno Pereira will not be forgotten, vows Brazil’s Lula

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President says last year’s killings were result of ‘encouragement of anarchy’ in Amazon under Bolsonaro

Dom Phillips and Bruno Pereira will not be forgotten, Brazil’s president, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, has vowed, blaming their killings a year ago on the Amazonian “anarchy” unleashed under his predecessor, Jair Bolsonaro.

Phillips, a British journalist, and Pereira, a Brazilian Indigenous expert, were shot dead by a group of illegal fishers on 5 June last year while travelling in the remote Javari valley near Brazil’s border with Colombia and Peru.

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Outcry as Brazil congress moves to gut environment and Indigenous ministries

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Plan to drastically dilute bodies’ powers would deal severe blow to Lula’s attempt to reverse Bolsonaro’s era of Amazon devastation

Brazilian activists have voiced outrage after congress moved to drastically dilute the powers of the environment and Indigenous peoples ministries in what campaigners called a potentially crippling blow to efforts to protect Indigenous communities and the Amazon.

Hopes that Brazil could turn the page on Jair Bolsonaro’s era of Amazon devastation were sky-high after the far-right leader lost last year’s presidential election to the leftist Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva. During his campaign Lula vowed to stamp out environmental crime and champion Indigenous people, and after taking power in January put the veteran environmentalist Marina Silva in charge of environmental affairs and made the Indigenous activist Sônia Guajajara head of a new ministry for Indigenous peoples.

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Brazilian police search Jair Bolsonaro mansion and arrest aide

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Police investigate suspected efforts to fake Covid-19 vaccination records in order to travel to US

Federal police have searched the mansion of Brazil’s former president Jair Bolsonaro and arrested one of his closest aides as part of an investigation into suspected criminal efforts to fake Covid-19 vaccination records in order to travel to the US.

Lt Col Mauro Cid Barbosa, described by the Brazilian press as Bolsonaro’s “right-hand man”, was one of six people arrested on Wednesday morning as police raided multiple addresses in the capital, Brasília, and Rio de Janeiro.

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Brazil: Lula security chief resigns after leaked footage of far-right palace riot

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Video shows Gonçalves Dias inside presidential palace as supporters of Bolsonaro went on the rampage in January

A key member of Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva’s new administration has been forced to resign after the emergence of security footage showing him inside the presidential palace during the 8 January far-right assault on Brazil’s democratic institutions.

After his election last year, president Lula made the retired army general Gonçalves Dias head of Brazil’s Institutional Security Bureau (GSI), which advises the president on defense and security matters and handles presidential security.

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Ukraine criticises Brazil’s peace efforts and invites Lula to see invasion’s effects

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Kyiv accuses Brazilian president’s initiative for giving equal weight to ‘the victim and the aggressor’

Brazilian president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva has condemned the “violation of Ukraine’s territorial integrity” by Russia and again called for mediation to end the war, as he came under fire for his previous comments on the conflict.

Speaking at a lunch on Tuesday with Romanian president Klaus Iohannis, Lula said a group of neutral nations must come together to help broker peace between Russia and Ukraine.

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Lavrov’s Brazil visit highlights Lula’s neutral foreign policy despite US dismay

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Brasília encounter, like Brazilian president’s recent trip to China and offer of peacemaking in Ukraine, is part of diplomatic reset

Russia’s minister of foreign affairs, Sergei Lavrov, is due to arrive in Brasília on Monday for talks with his Brazilian counterpart, Mauro Vieira, in the latest of a series of bilateral encounters likely to ruffle the US.

Lavrov arrives just as Brazil’s president, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, returns from a state visit to China, and both missions are part of a diplomatic reset Lula has pursued since returning to power this year, as he strives to recover Brazil’s international reputation after his predecessor, Jair Bolsonaro, dismantled Brazil’s established tradition of cooperation.

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Indigenous children suffer most from illegal miners’ Amazon invasion

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The influx of heavily armed gangs, now being tackled by President Lula, has had a catastrophic effect on infant health

The severely malnourished Yanomami baby girl is about eight months old but weighs just 2.75kg (6lbs) – less than half the average for her age. A catheter runs into her tiny right foot, delivering a blood transfusion doctors hope will save her life.

“This is a really difficult moment for us,” says Francinete Rodrigues, the director of the Santo Antônio children’s hospital in Boa Vista, an institution on the frontline of an Indigenous health catastrophe Brazil’s president calls an attempted genocide.

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Record deforestation in Brazil’s Amazon rainforest shows challenge facing Lula

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Satellites show record destruction for the month of February as new government tries to undo damage wreaked under Bolsonaro

Deforestation in Brazil’s Amazon rainforest rose in February to the highest level on record for the month, highlighting the scale of the challenge facing the administration of Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, as it tries to undo the environmental destruction wreaked under the far-right former president Jair Bolsonaro.

Government satellites show that a record 322 sq km of Amazon rainforest were destroyed in February, a 62% increase on last year and the highest number for the month since records began.

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Jair Bolsonaro applies for six-month tourist visa to stay in US

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Ex-Brazil president who has been in Florida since 30 December is being investigated for attempt to topple country’s government

Brazil’s former president Jair Bolsonaro, who is facing investigation as part of an inquiry into an alleged attempt to topple the country’s government, has filed a request for a six-month visitor visa to stay in the US.

The former leader is understood to have entered the US on an A-1 visa reserved for sitting heads of state, which would expire on Tuesday, 30 days from the end of his presidential term.

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Brazil’s female diplomats in new equality push after dark days of Bolsonaro

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Movement to tackle lack of diversity within Brazil’s foreign office coincides with Lula’s return to power

More than a century after Maria José de Castro Rebello Mendes became, in 1918, the first woman to enter Brazil’s diplomatic service, the country’s female diplomats have launched a new push for equal rights and opportunity. Women make up less than 25% of Brazil’s diplomatic corps and just 12% of ambassadors.

“We are blossoming at this moment of democratic government,” said Irene Vida Gala, a senior diplomat who served as ambassador to Ghana and is now the president of the newly created Association of Female Brazilian Diplomats.

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Jair Bolsonaro accused of acts of genocide against Amazonian group

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Brazilian president says predecessor emboldened wildcat miners which led to wrecked forests and disease and death among Indigenous people

Brazil’s new president, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, has accused Jair Bolsonaro’s far-right administration of committing genocide against the Yanomami people of the Amazon, amid public outrage over a humanitarian catastrophe in the country’s largest Indigenous territory.

Lula visited the Amazon state of Roraima on Saturday to denounce the plight of the Yanomami, whose supposedly protected lands have been plunged into crisis by government neglect and the explosion of illegal mining.

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Lula sacks head of Brazilian army after far-right insurrection

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Júlio Cesar de Arruda reportedly stopped police detaining suspected rioters who took refuge outside army headquarters

The head of the Brazilian army has been sacked by the country’s new president, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, after claims the commander tried to shield rightwing rioters from arrest after the 8 January insurrection in Brasília.

Gen Júlio Cesar de Arruda, who only took up the role in late December, was removed from his position on Saturday, nearly two weeks after supporters of the former far-right president Jair Bolsonaro brought havoc to Brazil’s capital in what Lula’s administration called a botched coup attempt.

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