Even a Lula victory may not restore Brazil’s forests

TO HEAR many people talk, the fate of the planet hangs in the balance depending on the outcome of the second-round vote in Brazil’s election. On one side is Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, the leftist who all but halted the logging of the Amazon in his term as president from 2003 to 2010. On the other is Jair Bolsonaro, the Trumpy right-winger who razed the rainforest and pushed deforestation last year to nearly double its levels during his first year in office.

A sharp left-right dichotomy is a common way to think about the stakes in the runoff poll on Oct 30. Still, as with the candidates’ economic platforms, their forest policies have a lot more in common than you might expect.

While Bolsonaro’s management of Brazil’s ecosystems has been appalling, Lula’s policies on forest protection were already being loosened under the presidency of his successor and party ally Dilma Rousseff. Dependent – like Rousseff – on the votes of an agribusiness-dominated bloc in Congress that’s more dominant now than it was in his first term, he’s made efforts this time around to woo farming interests who strongly identify with Bolsonaro.