Plataforma CIPÓ’s Executive Director, Maiara Folly, was featured as a source in two reports by the French newspaper Le Monde on the environment and Brazil’s elections. Both articles were published on September 27 by the newspaper’s Rio de Janeiro correspondent, Anne-Dominique Correa. One assesses the environmental record of the Lula administration, as President Lula seeks a fourth term. The other shows that, even as the country faces a severe drought and the effects of a historic El Niño, the climate agenda has taken a back seat in the campaign ahead of the October 4 and 25 elections.
In the article assessing the government’s record, Folly says that “the legacy of the Lula administration has been positive for the environmental agenda” and highlights “the central role that the environment has played in Brazil’s foreign policy.” The newspaper recalls that Brazil hosted COP30 in Belém in November 2025. It also notes that the annual area deforested in the Amazon fell from 11,594 km² to 5,731 km² between 2022 and 2025, a 50% reduction, according to data from Brazil’s National Institute for Space Research (INPE). “The climate agenda was also present at every G20 and BRICS summit chaired by Brazil,” Folly adds. In her view, Brazil’s climate leadership is particularly important in light of the United States’ withdrawal from the Paris Agreement.
In its report on the election campaign, Le Monde notes that the government must negotiate with a Congress in which the opposition holds 257 of the 513 seats in the Chamber of Deputies and 37 of the 81 seats in the Senate. Looking ahead to the political landscape after the October 4 vote, which will renew the Chamber of Deputies and part of the Senate, Folly warns that “there is a significant risk that Congress could become even more conservative and resistant to the environmental agenda, as the right has placed strong emphasis on Senate races and could also secure a majority there.”
