Lula’s environment minister says protecting the Amazon will be top priority

The politician tipped to become Brazil’s new environment minister has paid tribute to the murdered British journalist Dom Phillips and said Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva’s incoming government will battle to honour the memory of the rainforest martyrs killed trying to safeguard the Amazon.

Speaking to the Guardian after Lula’s historic election victory on Sunday, Marina Silva said Brazil now had the chance to build “a new democratic ecosystem” in which conservation, sustainability and the climate crisis will take centre stage after Jair Bolsonaro’s era of Amazon destruction.

“It’s so sad to know that many people who dreamed of this moment and fought for this moment are no longer here. That is what lies behind this great effort to honour them,” said Silva, an Amazon-born environmentalist who was Lula’s environment minister from 2003 until 2008 and was recently elected to congress.

Silva paid tribute to Phillips and the Brazilian Indigenous expert Bruno Pereira, who were killed in the Amazon in June – a crime that shocked the world and exposed the environmental catastrophe playing out under Bolsonaro.

“This is a long-running struggle and lamentably Chico Mendes, Sister Dorothy [Stang], Dom Phillips, Bruno and all those who have fallen as part of this struggle [are no longer with us],” said Silva, who also honoured the Indigenous and environmental activists killed during Bolsonaro’s four-year administration.

In his first speech as president-elect, Lula pledged to make the environment one of his government’s top priorities, telling journalists: “We are going to fight for zero deforestation in the Amazon.”

Lula, who managed to dramatically reduce deforestation during his two-term government, said Brazil would retake a lead role in the fight against the climate crisis and that he was open to international collaboration to protect its environment.

On Sunday Norway’s environment minister said the Amazon Fund – a billion-dollar international kitty designed to support Amazon protection efforts – would be reactivated, having been frozen as a result of the “head-on collision with Bolsonaro” over deforestation.

Lula is expected to send a high-level delegation to next month’s Cop27 climate summit in Egypt.

“Brazil and the planet need the Amazon alive,” Lula told reporters, vowing to crack down on illegal mining, logging and ranching. “One standing tree is worth more than tons of wood that are illegally extracted by those who think only of easy profits.”

“When an Indigenous child is murdered because of the greed of environmental predators, part of humanity dies too,” Lula added.

Marina Silva, who was born in a remote rubber tapping community in the Amazon state of Acre, said such commitments were “a question of honouring all of the legacies and the memories of all those who have lost their lives, so that Brazil can be a democratic country which fights inequality in a sustainable manner”.

Marcio Astrini, the head of an umbrella group of NGOs called the Climate Observatory, said he was heartened by Lula’s message.

“This is the first time I have heard a president-elect talk about putting an end to deforestation in the Amazon. He didn’t need to do this, if he wasn’t convinced it was possible,” Astrini said. “I believe he is genuinely really convinced that the environmental agenda is something that needs to be treated as a priority in his government.”

Astrini admitted the Amazon’s problems would not disappear overnight. Deforestation numbers – which have increased dramatically under Bolsonaro – were unlikely to fall significantly next year because of the rotten “inheritance” left by the rightwing incumbent.

Amazon destruction has exploded in the lead-up to the election as environmental criminals raced to raze the rainforest before Bolsonaro lost power. An area almost the size of Greater London was lost last month alone.

“But you need to start somewhere,” Astrini said. “The next four years are going to be a window of opportunity for us to recover that which has been ruined and build a consensus so that never again do we witness … the same kind of destruction.”