The EU’s law to restore nature was given the green light by the European parliament this week.
The long-awaited “nature restoration” law aims to repair the EU’s damaged ecosystems over the next few decades.
The final vote on the law came amid farmer protests across the EU and, in response, rollbacks of some of the bloc’s other environmental plans.
The law became a focal point for misinformation in recent months and saw strong levels of opposition from different groups.
It passed through a final parliament vote on 27 February, with 329 votes in favour, 275 against and 24 abstentions – a larger margin of approval than a knife-edge vote last summer.
It now needs to be approved by the council of the EU before it can take effect.
In this Q&A, Carbon Brief explains the aims of the nature restoration law, the challenges it faced, its scientific backing and what it will mean for climate change and biodiversity loss in the EU.
- What is the EU nature restoration law?
- Will the law help the EU meet its climate and biodiversity goals?
- What is the scientific backing behind the law?
- What are the most contentious parts of the nature restoration law?
- What has been the reaction to the EU’s nature restoration law?
What is the EU nature restoration law?
Proposed in June 2022, the nature restoration law is seen by the European Commission as a key part of meeting the EU’s climate and biodiversity goals.
It aims to restore at least 20% of the EU’s land and sea areas by 2030.
Within this wider goal, countries need to restore 30% of habitats covered by the new law (including forests, rivers and wetlands) that are already degraded by 2030. This increases to 60% by 2040 and at least 90% by 2050.
Sabien Leemans, a senior biodiversity policy officer at WWF EU, says the law is a “very big opportunity” for nature – and a rare one in terms of EU policy. She tells Carbon Brief:
“It is comparable to the habitats directive that was adopted in the early 90s – more than 30 years ago. It’s not like in the climate sphere that you have legislation coming up every year or every couple of years.
“For nature, with a proposal that would really impact how we use land and sea in Europe, I think this is really historic and [it is] not happening even every decade.”
The law is intended to work alongside other environmental policies on a range of issues, including birds, habitats, water and invasive alien species. Its goals also align with the new EU 2030 forest strategy, which intends to protect and restore forests across the bloc.
The law states that EU countries should, “as appropriate”, prioritise restoring habitats that are “not in good condition” and also located in Natura 2000 sites – an EU network of protected areas containing at-risk species and ecosystems – until 2030.
These areas are “essential” for nature conservation, the law says, and there is an existing EU obligation to ensure that Natura 2000 areas are covered by long-term restoration measures.
EU countries will need to submit national restoration plans to the commission to show how they plan to deliver on key targets, with requirements for monitoring and reporting on their progress towards those goals. Leemans tells Carbon Brief:
“The member states will choose where they will restore, what they will restore, how they will restore. And together the national restoration plans need to add up to the targets.”
More than 110,000 people and organisations responded to an online public consultation on the proposal in early 2021. The results showed “overwhelming support” for legally binding targets, with 97% of respondents in favour of general EU restoration targets across all ecosystems, the commission said.
The law scraped through a parliament vote in July 2023, which saw elements of the text “watered down”. (See: What are the most contentious parts of the nature restoration law?)
After further negotiations, the commission, parliament and council of the EU provisionally agreed the terms of the new law in November 2023. This passed through the final parliament vote on 27 February 2024.
There was a “last-ditch attempt from rightwing parties” to reject the law in this vote, the Guardian reported. The centre-right European People’s Party (EPP), the largest political group in the parliament, voted against the law alongside “far-right lawmakers”, the newspaper said.
Civil society organisations such as the European Environmental Bureau and Friends of the Earth Europe celebrated the EU parliament passed the law “despite EPP & far-right’s attempts to block the text”.
Politico noted that the proposal’s “narrow survival underscored broader trends likely to hamper green lawmaking” after the upcoming European parliament elections in June.
The law still has to be adopted by the council of the EU before it can take effect. This is usually a formality, but Deutsche Welle reported that “it is not guaranteed and some recent EU policies have faced blockages and delays because of domestic pushback”.
The parliament’s lead negotiator on the proposal, César Luena, said the EU can now “move from protecting and conserving nature to restoring it”.
Will the law help the EU meet its climate and biodiversity goals?
The commission’s original proposal for the law said that “more decisive action” is needed to achieve the EU’s climate and biodiversity goals, adding that the bloc “has so far failed to halt the loss of biodiversity”. It said:
“The outlook for biodiversity and ecosystems is bleak and shows that the current approach is not working.”
Global and national targets are in place around the world to tackle climate change and biodiversity loss. But, currently, greenhouse gas emissions are still rising and biodiversity is declining at a level described by the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) as “unprecedented”.
Despite the fact that many elements have been weakened since the first proposal, the law is intended to be one part of several solutions needed to bridge this gap between goals and action. Leemans tells Carbon Brief:
“It’s quite clear from all reports that we are still losing nature. More than 80% of the natural habitats in Europe that are listed on the habitats directive are not in a good condition. So there is really a lot of work to do.
“It’s really important to protect nature…But it’s not enough – you also need to start restoring nature where it has been lost and bring it back.”
The EU’s 2030 biodiversity strategy sets out the bloc’s plans to protect nature and improve ecosystems.
Healthier ecosystems would have a range of wider benefits, including being more resilient to climate change, reducing the impact of extreme weather and helping to mitigate greenhouse gas emissions. Currently, 26% of the EU’s land and 12% of marine areas are protected.
Romina Pourmokhtari, the Swedish climate and environment minister, says the nature restoration law will hopefully help the EU “rebuild a healthy level of biodiversity, fight climate change and meet our international commitments under the Kunming-Montreal agreement”.
The Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework (GBF) is a set of goals and targets aiming to “halt and reverse” biodiversity loss by the end of this decade. It includes a target to conserve 30% of the world’s land and 30% of the ocean by 2030. (See Carbon Brief’s recent Q&A on progress one year since the framework was agreed.)
The map below, taken from a 2023 study, shows the existing European network of protected areas under strict protection (light blue), not-strict protection (yellow) and new protected area corridors (dark blue). EU countries are shown in dark grey. The level of the protection is based on categories from the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN). The areas under the strictest protection have minimal presence of humans.
According to an impact assessment study published by the commission earlier this year, the economic benefits of restoring a number of different EU ecosystems – including peatlands, forests and lakes – by 2050 range at around €1.86tn, compared to the estimated €154bn cost of these actions.
The report added that, in a number of ways, the “climate mitigation benefits alone outweighed the cost of restoration action required”.
What is the scientific backing behind the law?
The scientific rationale for the EU’s nature restoration law is laid out in the commission’s impact assessment study, which considers both ecosystem restoration needs and the financing needed to implement such targets in the EU.
About 80% of habitats in the EU have “bad” or “poor” conservation status, and only 15% are in “good” condition, according to the European Environment Agency’s (EEA) 2020 “state of nature in the EU” report.
More than half of peatlands – including bogs, mires and fens – and half of dune habitats are in bad condition, the report says. Coastal habitats have the smallest area remaining in good condition.
The chart below, taken from the report, shows the percentage of habitat in good (green), unknown (grey), poor (yellow) and bad (red) condition.
As a result of the degradation of habitats, many species across the EU are in decline.
For example, pollinators are crucial for food production, but one in three bee and butterfly species are in decline, according to the council. It points out that €5bn of the EU’s annual agricultural output “can be directly attributed” to those species, but about half of the areas where pollinator-dependent crops are grown “do not provide suitable conditions for pollinators”.
The EEA assessment provides a map of the conservation status in the EU habitats, shown below. Regions in red have “bad” conservation status, regions in yellow are classified as “poor” conservation status and green areas have a “good” conservation status.
During a webinar hosted by the European Geosciences Union at the end of last year, Damien Thomson, a political advisor working within the European parliament, said the law is “largely scientifically based, but there’s room for improvement”.
In the webinar, Thomson emphasised that the commission considered the scientific merit of the legislation, but said that the scientific evidence did not hold equal weight to the political voices in the parliament.
The EU set its first nature restoration target in 2010, as part of the EU biodiversity strategy to 2020. That strategy contained a target aimed to restore “at least 15% of degraded ecosystems” by 2020.
However, the bloc did not achieve any of the six targets set out in that strategy, the impact assessment found. It stated that the restoration target was hindered by several issues, such as the lack of legally binding targets and the “ambiguity” as to which ecosystems and restoration activities it was referring to.
The new restoration law stems from the EU biodiversity strategy for 2030, which aims to establish legally binding targets to restore “significant areas of degraded and carbon-rich ecosystems by 2030”.
The strategy aims to legally protect a minimum of 30% of the land, including inland waters, and 30% of the sea in the EU by 2030. It additionally set a target to ensure that 30% of EU species and habitats reach “a favourable conservation status” and to restore at least 25,000 kilometres of free-flowing rivers by that date.
It adds that the commission and the EEA will guide countries to “select and prioritise the species and habitats for restoration measures”.
The restoration law also acknowledges that the GBF requires that at least 30% of degraded ecosystems worldwide – including terrestrial, inland water and marine and coastal ecosystems – should be “under effective restoration” by 2030.
However, the law ultimately required restoration of 20% of the EU’s lands and seas by 2030.
In a joint statement after the final vote, BirdLife Europe, ClientEarth, the European Environmental Bureau and WWF EU said they were “relieved that MEPs listened to facts and science, and did not give in to populism and fear-mongering”. The statement added:
“Now, we urge member states to follow suit and deliver this much-needed law to bring back nature in Europe.”
What are the most contentious parts of the nature restoration law?
One of the main objections against the new law was around restoration requirements for drained peatlands used for agriculture and came from political and farming groups.
Specifically, member states are required to establish measures to restore organic soil in 30% of agricultural lands lying in drained peatlands by 2030.
This can be achieved by a range of actions, which include converting cropland to permanent grassland, establishing peat-forming vegetation or fully rewetting drained peatlands to allow padiculture – sowing of crops on peatlands or on rewetted peats.
The initial proposal was intended to reach 50% of such areas by 2040 and 70% by 2050; however, the final regulation slashed those percentages to 40% and 50%, respectively.
This target faced political resistance from conservative parties, who argued that the law would threaten the livelihoods of farmers and fishers, decrease food production and push up prices. These groups raised a “relentless campaign to bring down the text”, Euronews reported.
The European People’s Party (EPP) also sought “to drastically reduce the scope of [the] plans for” peatland restoration and was “against the conversion of agricultural land for other uses”, including restoring peatlands, Deutsche Welle reported.
In response to these concerns, member states “added flexibility” to targets linked to the rewetting of peatlands and green urban spaces into their proposal, according to Euronews.
The outlet reported that Pourmokhtari, the Swedish minister, said the country’s presidency of the council had “listened carefully to all member states who had different concerns and remarks on the proposal”.
Another target that spurred strong political objection was the restoration of forest ecosystems.
The final law mandates member states to “achieve an increasing trend at national level of at least six out of seven” forest indicators, which include traits such as the amount of non-living woody biomass in standing and lying deadwood, organic carbon stocks, forest connectivity and tree species diversity.
By June 2031, EU countries need to inform the commission about their progress on restoring nature between when the law takes effect and 2030.
After this, countries need to report progress at least every six years. The first draft of the law had proposed assessments every three years.
Countries also must, by June 2028, report other information to the commission, including details around which areas will be restored.
The law says that when considering forest and other ecosystem restoration actions, countries “shall aim to contribute” to the EU’s existing goal to plant at least 3bn trees across the bloc by 2030, prioritising native tree species and adapted species.
Nordic countries “had previously pushed back against previous forestry-related targets” and were expected to oppose the nature restoration law, a parliamentary representative told Euractiv.
Sweden, for example, was “believed to be opposed” to the targets of forest management contained in the law, Euronews reported.
Opposition parties accused Finland’s government of a “failure to protect national interests” and pointed out that the law would be costly, the Helsinki Times reported in November. Riikka Purra, chairperson of the right-wing populist Finns Party, said:
“We won’t stand by pillaging Finnish forests a lot, but also not for pillaging them a bit less.”
In response, Finland’s prime minister, Sanna Marin, said her country would accept the proposal if it included amendments and met “Finland’s overall interests”, the outlet said. It added that the government was pushing for the restoration measures to be “voluntary for land owners”, since forest policy “falls strictly” within national policy.
Following negotiations by the EU parliament, commission and council last year, a statement from WWF said the law had been “watered down”, with “disappointing” exemptions and “excessive flexibility” on some requirements.
Despite this, Leemans believes the law will lead to improvements for European ecosystems. But, she adds:
“The key will be the implementation.”
What has been the reaction to the EU’s nature restoration law?
Since the law was first proposed in 2022, it has received support from a range of groups, including wind energy and solar power associations, hundreds of scientists, dozens of major companies, an EU organic farming representative group and NGOs such as WWF, BirdLife International and Greenpeace.
The International Union for Conservation of Nature called on the EU to adopt the law and Wetlands International Europe, a non-governmental group of wetland preservation organisations, said the law will help to “secure the future of our vital wetlands”.
Swedish campaigner Greta Thunberg was among a group of climate activists calling for a strong nature restoration law outside the European parliament building in Strasbourg last July.
There were two key opponents to the proposed law – the major agricultural lobby group Copa-Cogeca and the EPP.
The EPP made a number of debunked remarks about the law, including that it would “turn the entire city of Rovaniemi” – the alleged “hometown” of Santa Claus – into a forest.
The party also claimed that the targets will lead to a “global famine” alongside higher food prices and increased imports of “unsafe food that does not meet EU standards”. These claims have been rebutted by a number of experts.
An open letter signed by 3,000 scientists in June last year pushed back on claims that the law will harm farmers and threaten food security. The letter says that these kinds of claims “not only lack scientific evidence, but even contradict it”, Reuters reported.
“Green-minded” lawmakers, scientists and environmental groups said the EPP was opposing nature and climate policies to “score political points in rural constituencies” in the upcoming parliament elections, Politico reported last November.
In a correspondence to the scientific journal Nature, Dr Kris Decleer, a researcher at Belgium’s Research Institute for Nature and Forest, and Prof An Cliquet, a researcher at Ghent University, wrote that opponents to the law were “influenced by lobbyists in favour of intensive agriculture, fisheries and the forestry industry, who say that the law would cut jobs and undermine food and energy security”.
Many farmers will be directly impacted by the nature restoration law and it featured among the concerns of farmers protesting across the EU in recent months (see Carbon Brief’s analysis of how these protests relate to climate change).
The commission’s impact assessment for the law said that the farming, forestry and fishery sectors are likely to be most impacted through, for example, lost income from less intensive extractive management in forestry. However, it also said that these sectors stand to benefit in the long-term, as they will be more resilient to extreme weather and reduce the risks of pest outbreaks as a result.
There are also farm-related exemptions in the law, including an option to halt certain targets for agricultural ecosystems in case of any “unforeseeable and exceptional events outside of the EU’s control and with severe EU-wide consequences for food security”. This was added to the text in November last year. (See: What are the most contentious parts of the nature restoration law?)
The law includes further leeway for countries to potentially set lower restoration targets for certain ecosystems in specific circumstances.
Leemans, from WWF EU, tells Carbon Brief that criticisms from the EPP and others were “mainly misinformation, and really on an unprecedented scale”. She says:
“We’ve never seen such an aggressive campaign against a legal proposal coming from the commission. It was really putting the [EU] Green Deal in jeopardy because the nature restoration law is the biodiversity pillar of the Green Deal, and it’s really a very important piece of the puzzle.”
She adds that while the EPP may claim it is “protecting or defending the farmers’ concerns”, she believes “they are doing the opposite”. She says:
“All science tells you the same – it’s healthy ecosystems that need to be in place to ensure food security. Agriculture needs healthy soils, needs water retention, needs flooding and drought prevention, pollination and all this depends on healthy ecosystems.
“It’s very cynical to tell people that you’re defending farmers and actually blocking one of the solutions for farmers.”
The post Q&A: What does the EU ‘nature restoration’ law mean for climate and biodiversity? appeared first on Carbon Brief.
Q&A: What does the EU ‘nature restoration’ law mean for climate and biodiversity?
An exceptional El Niño is building. The World Meteorological Organization (WMO) says it has intensified to very strong levels and is likely to last at least through February 2027. If its current trajectory holds, it could become stronger than anything seen since WMO monitoring began four decades ago.
That is bad news for agriculture. El Niño – a naturally occurring weather phenomenon – can scramble rainfall patterns across the world, bringing drought to some regions and floods to others. And this time it is unfolding against the backdrop of a significantly hotter climate, with farmers already contending with unreliable growing seasons, extreme heat and less predictable rainfall because of global warming.
El Niño expected to bring next record-hot year as soon as 2027
We are seeing the consequences already. In Sri Lanka, drought linked to El Niño has dried wells and reservoirs and cut into crops and farmer incomes. Indonesia is experiencing its worst wildfire season in 11 years, with prolonged drought and extreme heat exacerbated by El Niño. And in Peru, authorities are preparing for the opposite extreme: intense rains, flooding and landslides which the national civil-defence agency says could affect around 1.2 million people.
These impacts will multiply as El Niño intensifies.
And yet, just as the risks to food production are rising, the money available to help farmers withstand them is shrinking.
10% funding decline in 2024
A forthcoming analysis from the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) shows that climate-related development finance for agrifood systems is moving in the wrong direction. In 2024, the latest year for which data is available, it fell by 10 percent compared with a 2 percent overall decline. The sectors that put food on our tables — crops, livestock, forestry and fisheries — received just 5 percent.
Yet this is precisely the moment when climate investment in agriculture needs to grow, not shrink. It can help communities adapt, build resilience and protect food security, while unlocking larger flows of public and private finance. Agriculture feeds us, supports the livelihoods of well over a billion people, and is often the first sector hit by drought, floods and extreme heat. Cutting that investment now is a false economy.
One failed harvest can plant the seed for the next crisis, forcing farmers to eat the seed they have saved for planting, sell livestock or tools, or take on debt. It can also deepen food insecurity, disrupt supply chains and drive up prices, showing up months later in supermarket aisles far away.
The Central American Dry Corridor, stretching through much of the region, shows both how exposed farmers are, and what investment can do. Based on an analysis of 41 years of satellite observations, FAO finds that some crop and pasture areas there face more than a 50 percent chance of agricultural drought over the coming months.
About half of Central America’s 1.9 million producers of maize, beans and other basic grains live in the Dry Corridor. Many grow food both for sale and for their own families. When a harvest fails, they lose both income and dinner.
El Salvador project conserves water and soil
In El Salvador, which lies within the Dry Corridor, more than 50,000 farmers have adopted practices to better withstand drought and increasingly unreliable rainfall through RECLIMA, a project financed by the Green Climate Fund and implemented by FAO in partnership with the government of El Salvador. It has substantial national co-financing, including from the country’s Environmental Investment Fund.
El Niño can intensify El Salvador’s annual mid-season dry spell, known as the canícula, turning it into a longer, harsher drought just as maize needs water most.
For María Cristina Corvera de López, a second-generation farmer in rural Nahualapa, adapting means changing how every drop of rain is captured and used. She plants trees alongside her crops to provide shade and minimise evaporation and uses simple irrigation channels and a homemade drip system to conserve water. Instead of burning stalks, leaves and husks after harvest, as generations before her did, she turns them into mulch to hold moisture in the soil.
“The effects of climate change are a constant challenge,” she says. But the new techniques have made her farm more resilient to El Niño as well. Where she once harvested about 50 bags of maize per acre, she now gets around 80, even during droughts. It’s enough to feed her family and sell the surplus.
Managing risk now cuts future costs
Together, these adaptations can mean the difference between losing a crop and getting through a dry season with enough food, seed and income to plant again. They are also the result of climate finance invested before disaster strikes.
RECLIMA shows what that kind of adaptation investment can buy. Adaptation accounted for 45 percent of climate-related development finance to agrifood systems in 2024, and multilateral development banks are directing more agricultural finance towards resilience. That shift reflects a growing recognition that adaptation is a form of risk management, not just a development cost.
We need much more of it. The same investments that help farmers withstand El Niño also enable them to adapt to a hotter, more unpredictable future. Cutting investment in the people who produce our food just as climate risks intensify does not save money. It simply pushes a much larger bill into the next harvest, the next food crisis, and the next El Niño.
The post As El Niño intensifies, we should be investing more in the world’s farmers appeared first on Climate Home News.
As El Niño intensifies, we should be investing more in the world’s farmers
An area of Amazon forest roughly the size of the US state of New Jersey has remained standing due to Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva’s leadership of Brazil, according to Carbon Brief analysis.
Lula beat Jair Bolsonaro in the 2022 election to become president of the nation that is home to nearly 60% of the Amazon rainforest.
Forest loss surged during Bolsonaro’s far-right presidency and dropped sharply under the left-wing Lula, with Amazon deforestation likely to hit its lowest level on record this year.
Now, as another presidential election approaches, Lula is facing off against Bolsonaro’s son, Flávio Bolsonaro, whose “anti-environmental” policies are similar to his father’s.
Carbon Brief’s analysis suggests that at least 20,000 square kilometres (km2) of deforestation has been avoided since Lula took office and prioritised Amazon protection.
The analysis is based on modelling by an international research team of an alternative scenario in which Brazil’s flagship forest code legislation was not enforced – a proxy for Jair Bolsonaro’s leadership.
Experts tell Carbon Brief that this estimate is likely “conservative” and that actual deforestation under Bolsonaro could have been “much higher”.
With Lula and Flávio Bolsonaro tied in the polls, the upcoming election is expected to significantly shape the level of environmental action in the world’s fourth-largest emitter, whose emissions are largely driven by deforestation.
‘Brazil is back’
When Jair Bolsonaro was president of Brazil between 2019 and 2022, he championed the nation’s powerful agribusiness sector and oversaw an unprecedented increase in Amazon deforestation.
Bolsonaro weakened regulations, slashed federal agency budgets and empowered illegal activities in the Amazon, while attacking Indigenous and environmental groups.
This meant that the forest code – Brazil’s flagship legislation that requires landowners to preserve and restore forest on their property – was not properly enforced.
After Lula’s presidential victory in 2022, he promised to target “zero deforestation” by 2030, telling the COP27 UN climate summit that “Brazil is back”.
Lula rolled back Bolsonaro’s wave of deregulation and reinstated a deforestation “action plan”. Led by celebrated environmentalist Marina Silva, the environment ministry scaled up enforcement and policing activities in the Amazon.
As a result, annual deforestation in the Amazon has more than halved from 11,594km2 per year in 2022 to 5,731km2 in 2025.
Data from August 2025 to July 2026 – the timespan used in government records – is yet to be released, but preliminary satellite alerts put the deforestation figure at 2,874km2.
While the final figure is likely to be higher, experts still think Amazon deforestation in 2026 could hit its lowest level since records began in 1988.
New Jersey-sized forest
Compared to a scenario in which Bolsonaro won in 2022, Carbon Brief analysis suggests that at least 20,000km2 of Amazon forest remains standing today due to Lula’s leadership.
This area – roughly the size of Wales, Belize, Slovenia or the US state of New Jersey – is indicated by the grey area in the chart below.
This analysis is based on a 2023 study on the role of nature-based solutions in Brazil’s pathway to net-zero emissions. This was a refined update of a 2018 study that used the same GLOBIOM-Brazil model, from researchers at the University of Oxford, the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis and Brazil’s National Institute for Space Research (INPE).
It is based on a comparison of forest code implementation with a “baseline” scenario in which the code is not enforced, reflecting the kind of weak governance seen under the Bolsonaro administration. (See Carbon Brief’s 2022 article for more details of this modelling.)
Dr Aline Soterroni, a University of Oxford researcher who led the 2023 analysis, tells Carbon Brief that the reversal seen under Lula “shows how quickly deforestation can respond to political will”.
However, she stresses that the modelling of the “no forest code” scenario is “relatively conservative”, with deforestation remaining high but not rising.
Deforestation in this scenario – used here as a proxy for a Bolsonaro election win – is tempered by slower demand growth for Brazilian beef and soy, says Soterroni. She notes that the scenario also does not capture the potential for illegal forest clearing in response to weak governance.
Indeed, some experts anticipated in 2022 that a Bolsonaro victory would send deforestation rates rising to near-record levels.
Claudio Angelo, international policy coordinator at Brazil’s Climate Observatory, tells Carbon Brief that if Bolsonaro had won in 2022, “we have reason to believe [this would have resulted] in much higher rates than during his first term”.
Angelo says the “political signal” would likely have driven an “explosion of wildcat mining” and illegal deforestation in the Amazon. He also points to efforts – including by Flávio Bolsonaro – to formally dismantle the forest code in the Brazilian congress, during Jair Bolsonaro’s first term.
Soterroni notes that deforestation rates did not immediately drop following Lula’s election, as suggested by modelling of a full “forest code compliance” scenario. She says this reflects the “gradual and imperfect process” of restoring and enforcing the law.
Nevertheless, she tells Carbon Brief:
“The key message from our modelling is the contrast between these trajectories: weak environmental governance keeps deforestation substantially higher than full implementation of the forest code. That message remains relevant today.”
Election significance
With Jair Bolsonaro in prison for plotting a coup after losing the 2022 election, his son Flávio Bolsonaro, a senator for Rio de Janeiro, is standing against Lula in the upcoming contest for president.
There are 13 candidates, but Flávio Bolsonaro and Lula are by far the frontrunners and are currently neck-and-neck in opinion polls.
If Lula wins, experts say he is likely to continue with the “zero deforestation by 2030” agenda that has already had a pronounced impact on forest loss.
As the chart below shows, periods when Amazon deforestation fell in recent history all occurred during Lula’s three terms as president.
In contrast, experts say Flávio Bolsonaro, a climate sceptic who has indicated he will continue his father’s political agenda and favour agribusiness and mining, will likely drive a surge in deforestation. Angelo tells Carbon Brief:
“At the risk of sounding alarmist, I’ve been saying that Lula’s re-election is the only thing standing between us and a wide destruction of the Amazon.”
A Bolsonaro win would be a “tremendous disaster”, says Dr Patricia Pinho, deputy science director at the Amazon Environmental Research Institute, adding:
“I don’t think we can afford four years of increasing deforestation [and] violence against Indigenous peoples.”
Dr David Lapola, an ecologist focused on Amazon research at the University of Campinas in Brazil, says he believes deforestation “would certainly rise” and Brazil’s climate and deforestation goals “would be thrown in the trash bin”. He tells Carbon Brief:
“The Bolsonaro administration in the 2019-2022 period showed that the deconstruction of environmental policies and institutes can be done very, very quickly.
“In a matter of a few months, they can destroy what has been constructed over decades of environmental policy and activism in Brazil.”
‘Greenest’ policies
Lula has the “greenest” policy proposals of Brazil’s six top-polling presidential candidates, according to analysis by the Climate Observatory.
The analysis identifies 16 “positive and detailed” environmental commitments in Lula’s proposals, including reaffirming his “zero deforestation by 2030” goal.
Flávio Bolsonaro, on the other hand, has one positive environmental commitment and seven “clearly anti-environmental” proposals.
The right-wing politician has committed to zero “illegal” deforestation by 2029. However, he has also previously led an attempt to change the forest code, opening up large tracts of previously out-of-bounds forest for legal clearance by extractive industries.
Given this, Angelo tells Carbon Brief that he is sceptical about the 2029 pledge.
“The only way you can trust him on this is to think that he is going to revoke the forest code and make all illegal deforestation legal.”
Lula is also the only major candidate to list a clear target for cutting national emissions, sticking with Brazil’s existing goal to cut emissions by 59-67% by 2035, compared to 2005 levels.
Overall, the Climate Observatory notes that climate change and environmental issues “are off the radar for most candidates”, who are instead focusing on the economy and security issues.
Pinho adds that deforestation and the Amazon have not been at the “forefront” of this election, compared to 2022.
If Bolsonaro wins, up to 95% of the Amazon would fall under the leadership of right-wing national governments – including those in Bolivia, Colombia, Ecuador and Peru – reported Mongabay. It noted that presidents in all these nations “explicitly favour agribusiness and mining over environmental conservation”.
If no candidate receives a majority of votes in the first round of Brazil’s election on 4 October, a runoff will take place on 25 October, as has happened at every presidential election since 1998.
Soy moratorium and Brazilian congress
Other factors will also play a role in future deforestation in Brazil, regardless of the next president.
One is the effective end of the Amazon soy moratorium. This is a voluntary agreement signed by companies committing to not buy soya beans grown on land in the Brazilian Amazon that was deforested after 2008.
Conservation organisation WWF’s international director general, Kirsten Schuijt, previously described it as the “most impactful voluntary supply chain policy ever implemented”.
However, major grain traders withdrew from the agreement earlier this year, effectively bringing it to an end. Pinho describes this move as a “huge destruction” of Brazil’s environmental protections.
Research shows the moratorium prevented around 18,000km2 of deforestation in its first decade of operation from 2005-16.
In contrast, a 2026 study estimated that the end of the moratorium could result in 14,000km2 of additional deforestation in the Amazon by 2036.
Alongside choosing a new president on 4 October, Brazilian voters will elect state governors and members of congress, which will also factor into future environmental impacts.
Right-leaning parties, including the far-right Liberal Party linked to the Bolsonaros, currently hold half the seats of the two chambers of congress.
This has led to conflict between lawmakers and Lula. For example, in 2025, congress bypassed Lula’s veto of several aspects of a controversial piece of legislation dubbed the “devastation bill”.
Pinho says that the potential for a right-wing congress and president would be “devastating for the environmental and climate agenda”.
Lapola notes that a Flávio Bolsonaro presidency “would consolidate the view in Brazil that environmental protection is solely a matter of political preference, and not a crucial need of all people”. He adds:
“Land pillage, destruction of precious biodiversity and scorning of Indigenous peoples simply cannot be a nation’s project in the 21st century. We have got to be smarter than that, for sure.”
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The post Analysis: Lula presidency saved at least 20,000km2 of Brazilian Amazon since 2022 appeared first on Carbon Brief.
Analysis: Lula presidency saved at least 20,000km2 of Brazilian Amazon since 2022
This letter is a bit more direct and longer than most of those which I write, but I hope you will be okay with that, because the times seem to call for being plain.
A few weeks ago I got a text message from an old and dear friend —let’s call her Hannah.
I have enough shared life with Hannah that, whenever we talk, the conversation always feels current and effortless, despite gaps of months or even years.
Hannah has been talking with her son — we’ll call him Neil — who is a teenager and doing well in school, but wildly worried about the state of the world, including the imminent trajectory of global warming. Hannah and I don’t text each other other very often, but on this occasion she’s reached out with something visceral:
Neil has challenged me to point him to something hopeful, if I can find it. He says so far no one is showing any will to uphold the Paris Agreement. I am checking in to see how you still manage to have real hope.*
Then, just a few days later, the United Nations Environment Programme Limiting Overshoot report landed, containing the principal finding that it is likely the global temperature will soon exceed 1.5°C.
After that news, and the real time devastation in Nepal, and in the context of the broader state of the world, I found myself having multiple conversations with friends and colleagues about the structure of hope. I want to openly share that after a few of these exchanges, I metaphorically closed the blinds, and wondered how to feel, and what to do, because there is no avoiding the dreadfulness of the news, and what it means for the suffering of people and life on Earth.
But if you are fortunate enough to have time, space and security to do so, then after the darkness, you open the shutters and once again there is light. This is the structure of my innermost resolve.
* * *
Our lives — those of us living on our magnificent earth now — have the greatest possible purpose.
There is virtually no problem that we endlessly clever and creative, human beings cannot solve, when we work together.
And we are not just intelligent and ingenious; we are inherently social, nurturing and brave; capable of the deepest enduring love.
Each of the roughly 12,000 generations of humanity so far has made life possible for those who have followed, through acts of devotion.
Babies have been held and fed. Water and food have been found and shared. Shelter has been built. For 12,000 generations we have held the hands of our children.
Every single one of us was once carried in the arms of another, unable to walk ourselves. It is our thoughtfulness, kindness and care that have seen us through as a species. Sometimes this has been in the most exigent of circumstances, when enough of our ancestors did not give in, faced incredibly difficult things, to somehow make it through.
And so it comes to this. To what we now must do. We must do as 12,000 generations of people did for us.
The struggle to keep global warming to under 1.5 degrees may be over. The battle of return—to get our planet back to safe temperatures at emergency speed and scale — is just beginning. Upon this struggle depends the future of all we care about, and that of all life on Earth. The prospects of the next 12,000 generations are conditioned by our efforts now.
Our work now is to keep the overshoot as low as we can, make it as brief as possible, and do everything within our power to alleviate other pressures on nature. It is to take care of humanity — of one another — in the face of mounting climate and ecological damage. And by these efforts, create the conditions for future flourishing. Every fraction of every degree matters.
What must now be done is hard, much tougher than should have been necessary, because of the vested interests in coal, oil and gas and deforestation, and the failures of decision makers. And while renewable energy has surged, making the case for change much simpler, on the other side of the ledger there’s the reactionary and gangsterist turn of politics and the multiplier effects of wars and mass violence, with the existential destabilisation of big tech looming over all.
There is no sugarcoating the scale of difficulty. But what is necessary remains within our collective power. We must never, for one second, say that returning our planet to flourishing is impossible — many of the obvious solutions already exist; but even where transformation relies on reforms, technologies or capabilities that might sound fanciful, or historical changes that are unprecedented, this can be no barrier to our conviction. After all, much of what we take for granted today as ordinary features of social life, would have been considered impossible by every single generation before us.
The world has not been destroyed by nuclear war; we solved the growing hole in the ozone layer; Antarctica was kept sacrosanct from exploitation. Humanity has collectively triumphed before, and can do so again.
We can find the necessary social and political will to do what is needed because these are endlessly renewable resources. The necessary financial capital exists. Apart from the fossil fuel industry, the greatest barrier we face is to mistakenly concede that what lies before us is insurmountable. It is not.
We must avoid the siren song of fatalism. Because. It. Is. Never. Too. Late.
None of which is to be insensitive to the horrors already unleashed — the deadly and grotesque harm to people, places and species that cannot be undone; or to be blind to the impacts that are coming. But where we have the power to act, we also have the responsibility — and the extraordinary privilege — to do what must be done.
Although she is wounded, our planet is still alive and beautiful beyond all of our comprehension. Hundreds of billions of creatures live and thrive still upon this earth. Nothing has happened until it has happened, and life fights for life. Every beetle, every tree, all the fish in the ocean, the smallest of the geothermal shrimps, the greatest of the whales and the mightiest of the birds — all demand life every second of their existence, so that their species too may have future generations.
No individual has to know how to solve this alone. Indeed, finding some detachment and humility is essential to concentrate on the role that each of us can play.
Hope is not merely a mindset or a story we tell ourselves. Collective power is not abstract; it is what we do, together, applying ourselves to the practical mechanics of change and contestation within society, by being part of the organisations and networks of people that are dedicated to effective strategies. It is why I am so committed to Greenpeace.
Working from without and within, there are opportunities to make rapid change within institutions, governments, businesses and communities to create the social, economic and political momentum for emissions reduction at speed and scale, reminding ourselves always of what remains possible, even if it hasn’t happened yet.
We can return the planet to safer temperatures. We can put technologies back in the service of people and life. We can return to the assumptions that seemed so obvious just one generation ago — that it is both possible, and our obligation, to build a better future for all people, and for life on Earth.
I did write back to Hannah and Neil, to say honestly to a treasured friend and her son, that yes, as a matter of faith, conviction, evidence and strategy, absolutely there is real hope. And this is a pledge not just to Neil and his generation, but to the next 12,000.
Together, we have the power. Together, we cross this bridge through the dark. To secure an Earth capable of nurturing life in all of its magnificent diversity.
We did not choose to carry this historic responsibility, but here we are. And it is so lucky that we are here.
I wouldn’t choose any other time to be here, alive on Earth, with you.
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