A Blow to Brazil's Environment

Within days of taking power in January 2003, President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva flew his team of ministers to the three poorest municipalities in Brazil — he wanted the political elite to take a firsthand look at the living conditions of the impoverished voters that had elected them. On a makeshift stage in Brazil's northern scrubland, Lula, like a triumphant band leader, presented his troupe one by one. The crowd welcomed them all politely, but cheered raucously for Benedita da Silva, the black, former housemaid who picked to oversee Lula's social programs, for Culture Minister Gilberto Gil (one of the country's best known musicians) and for Marina Silva, the tiny, dark-skinned, former rubber-tapper from the western Amazon.

Silva, the new Environment Minister, cut an especially peculiar figure as she ambled timidly into view. While most of the crowd standing under a burning sun wore T-shirts and shorts or miniskirts and halter tops, Silva, a hard-core Evangelical Protestant in the world's biggest Catholic country, was dressed in a skirt down her ankles, and she appeared somber and unmoved by the attention, as though she felt unworthy of such acclaim. But the poor voters had cheered her because she was one of them. She was also a potent symbol of both Lula's all-inclusive government and his stated commitment to protecting the environment.

This week, that symbolism went the same way as 17% of the Amazon, when Silva resigned her post and disappeared from view. Although she had looked increasingly worn down by the recent power struggles with governors and ministers who prioritize economic development over environmental protection, her decision was unexpected, and it left Lula and the mandarins of Brasilia stunned.

Worse, it confirmed what many green activists had long feared — that the fig leaf Silva had provided her boss was stripped away, leaving his image unprotected and exposed, like the environment itself.

"Marina's resignation underlines the carelessness with which Lula's government is handling the environmental agenda and the protection of the Amazon," said Paulo Adario, Greenpeace's Amazon campaign coordinator. "Marina takes all of Lula's environmental credibility with her, credibility which she has brought to his government over the last five years. Without her, King Lula is completely naked."

Silva did have some success in what is a notoriously thankless brief. Her presence gave the ministry a credibility and visibility it had previously lacked, and she did well to slash deforestation to the same level as it had been in the early 1990s, and to convince Lula to set aside 12 million hectares as protected areas, 50 percent more than the previous government.

But too much of what she achieved was either being rolled back or was not fully implemented. Deforestation is on the rise again, and much of those 12 million hectares are protected only on paper. Lula overruled her on the big issues of the day, from his embrace of nuclear power, to the authorization of GM foods, to a host of other infrastructure projects outlined in his government's ambitious Growth Acceleration Program.

And in what is being interpreted as the final straw, a long-awaited Amazon development plan was finally announced last week, not in its original form, but in a version Greenpeace called "light." To add insult to injury, Lula embarrassed Silva by handing control of the plan to Mangabeira Unger, the Special Minister for Strategic Affairs.

"Everything she tried to do she was stymied; she was pretty isolated," said Peter May, assistant director of Friends of the Earth in Brazil. "Lula didn't give her as much prestige as she deserved. I think this is a loss for all of us."

All, perhaps, except the business community. Her slight figure may not have halted them in their tracks, but the loggers, ranchers and farmers who see the Amazon as an undeveloped field of dreams were delighted to see the back of a woman they failed to cow.

"Her overly ideological decisions have held Brazil back," said Assuero Doca Veronez, a cattle rancher in Silva's home state of Acre and the Brazilian Confederation of Agriculture and Livestock Farming's environmental spokesman. "Her aim was to stop the agricultural frontier advancing. The country could have been growing faster if she had been more flexible."

Veronez and his allies are betting that Silva's replacement will have no more power than she did. The man who has accepted Lula's invitation to replace her is Carlos Minc, until Wednesday the environment secretary in Rio de Janeiro state. Minc is respected as a true believer, even winning a UN prize in 1989 as one of 500 notable green campaigners.

But respect won't save the Amazon; after all, few people were more respected than Silva. And after five and a half years of sticking her finger in holes, she eventually decided enough was enough. If Minc is to stand any chance of succeeding where Silva failed, then his presence in Brasilia will have to be more than symbolic. Nothing suggests it will.