- The Amazonian population elected climate change deniers and politicians with a history of environmental fines to govern some of the region’s major cities.
- Pará’s state capital, Belém, which will host COP30 in 2025, may elect a mayor unconcerned about climate change.
- According to experts, opposing illegal activities is political suicide in municipalities whose economies rely on deforestation, illegal mining and illegal logging.
As international leaders, corporations and NGOs gear up to discuss efforts to tackle global warming at the upcoming United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP29) in Baku, Azerbaijan, residents in a crucial region for the climate crisis show they have very different priorities.
On Oct. 6, voters in the Amazon chose its mayors and councilors for the next four years, deciding as much about the rainforest’s future as authorities in international forums.
Many politicians who openly oppose conservationism were elected. Two of the seven Amazon states’ capitals elected candidates supported by former President Jair Bolsonaro, a climate denialist who empowered illegal miners and land-grabbers during his government from 2019-22.
“The rise of the far right is very visible in the Amazon states,” Wendell Andrade, public policy specialist for the Amazon at the Talanoa Institute, a Brazilian think tank committed to climate policy, told Mongabay.
In Rio Branco, Acre’s capital, Tião Bocalom, a strong advocate of agribusiness, was reelected. According to the Brazilian news outlet InfoAmazônia, he directed only 1.3% of the city’s budget to environmental preservation while in charge.
Bocalom told Mongabay he increased investments to support environmental protection and ensured technical assistance to small farmers so they wouldn’t need to burn their plots or deforest new areas. “I want human beings to be friends of the environment, not enemies, because all they’ve done all their lives is oppress small producers,” the mayor said.
In four other Amazon capitals, candidates backed by Bolsonaro had enough votes to run in the second round Oct. 27; the extra round happens in Brazil’s most populated municipalities, where none of the candidates got more than 50% of the votes.
Even Belém, Pará’s capital, which will hold COP30 in 2025, may elect a mayor who is unconcerned about climate change. “I’m not worried about it at all,” Congressman Éder Mauro told the Brazilian newspaper Folha de São Paulo about the climate conference.
He is running against a candidate backed by Pará’s governor, Helder Barbalho, an ally of President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, who ran pledging to protect the Amazon from deforestation.
According to Mauro, the population “is not concerned” about climate issues, which seems true for most Amazon voters.
“This is a non-issue for people in the countryside and even in capitals,” said Andrade, who lives in Belém and travels a lot in Pará’s countryside.
In a text message to Mongabay, Mauro said he believes that COP30 is an important economic and social asset for Belém and will work to ensure that the event leaves a positive legacy for the city.
The centrist and right-wing parties also dominated the elections in the municipalities targeted by the federal government as a priority to control deforestation in the Amazon. Of the 70 municipalities, 69 were decided in the first round, and only two went to left-wing parties, which historically favored environmental conservation in Brazil, according to news outlet ((o)) eco.
The 2024 elections happen during the Amazon’s worst drought ever. Large rivers, like the Madeira, Amazonas, Negro and Purus, reached their lowest levels ever, isolating communities, leading to food and water shortages and damaging local economies. Fire outbreaks have burned the Amazon in Brazil and the neighboring countries. This year’s extreme drought followed another harsh dry season in 2023, which was 30 times more likely due to climate change.
“It’s a development agenda that is bringing a lot of destruction, and yet a large part of the population prefers these candidates,” Maureen Santos, coordinator of policies and alternatives in FASE, a Brazilian nonprofit that helps to promote local and community development, told Mongabay. “We need to study this phenomenon to tackle it more concretely in the next elections.”
In Manaus, Amazonas’ state capital, two out of four leading contenders didn’t mention the word “fires” in their government plans despite the health crisis provoked by the smoke from illegal burnings.
“There is no social outcry so that the mayor feels compelled to curb deforestation and adapt the city to climate change,” Andrade said.
As a result, notorious environmental offenders reap success in their political endeavors. According to the Brazilian news outlet Agência Pública, candidates fined for environmental crimes were reelected in Pará and Mato Grosso municipalities.
That’s the case of Gelson Dill, reelected mayor of Novo Progresso, one of the Amazon deforestation hotspots at the fringes of BR-163 road in Pará. Dill, who won reelection with a whopping 81% support, has tallied 4 million reais ($715,000) in environmental fines, one of them for deforesting 200 hectares (495 acres) inside Jamanxim National Park.
One of his primary campaign pledges is to reduce the size of Jamanxim National Forest, a conservation unit, where land-grabbers illegally raise around 100,000 cattle.
In May, when Lula’s administration started seizing the animals in the unit, the mayor traveled to Brazil’s capital to push for the end of the operation. The meeting was organized by Governor Barbalho and the entourage included five congressmen, making clear that the scope of the land-grabbers’ political influence goes far beyond the municipal borders.
Once reelected, Dill’s first measure was calling a meeting with rural producers to criticize the federal government’s environmental operations and advocate for loosening Brazil’s Forest Code. In a text message to Mongabay, the mayor said he supports environmental responsibility and that, unlike other municipalities, Novo Progresso has 85% of its forests standing.
Give and take
In Itaituba, a municipality of Pará known as the Amazon illegal gold capital, all the leading contenders for City Hall had previous relations with mining and supported the expansion of the activity.
The intersection of politics and economics shows a set of shared interests. Pará is the only Amazon state where local administrations are allowed to issue licenses for gold mines up to 500 hectares (1,235 acres), known as garimpos — wildcat mining that isn’t held to the same stringent environmental standards as large-scale industrial mines.
That’s why gold miners find it essential to have “a friend” in Pará’s city halls or run for mayor themselves. “This ends up generating a process not only of complacency with illegality but also of legalization of illegality in several of these municipalities,” FASE’s Santos said.
Brazil’s Green Party contested Pará’s resolution delegating garimpos’ licensing to local administrations, and the case is still pending in the Supreme Court. Meanwhile, gold mines proliferate in the state, especially in Itaituba, which accounts for 30% of all garimpos’ permissions.
For the last eight years, the city had been run by Valmir Climaco, a controversial garimpo owner convicted for illegal logging and targeted by a Federal Police probe in 2019, when nearly 600 kilograms (1,300 pounds) of cocaine were found at one of his farms.
However, none of that prevented him from achieving another electoral victory this year. Since Climaco couldn’t run again — Brazil permits only one reelection in executive offices — he supported his vice-mayor in the dispute for City Hall, who won with 48% of votes. Mongabay talked with Climaco by phone, but he said he would not comment on the story.
“Illegal activity is popular and drives the local economy,” said Andrade, pointing out that logging and illegal gold mining are the primary sources of income and employment in many of these cities.
From chainsaw operators to gas station owners and workers of illegal gold mines and repair shops, they all depend on these activities to make their living. “If you are against illegality, you are politically doomed to failure,” Andrade said.
Campaign donations are directly proportional to the commitment of candidates to these trades. In Novo Progresso’s 2020 elections, for example, the Federal Police investigated one of the candidates for supposedly receiving money from illegal gold mining.
But the 2024 elections weren’t just bad news for conservationists. Candidates from Amazon’s traditional communities or sustainable programs have been organizing to face such financial power: this year’s municipal elections saw the highest number of Indigenous candidates in Amazon’s history (1,274), according to InfoAmazônia. Only 8% (107) were elected in the first round. In total, Amazon voters elected three Indigenous mayors, 96 councilors, and eight deputy mayors.
Experts agree, however, that expanding environmental defenders in public offices still lacks money and proper communication. Santos, from FASE, said many green candidates are quickly buried under waves of fake news. “These are narratives that don’t allow more progressive candidates to even be heard by the population and hinder the possibilities of renewal,” she said.
“We’re losing out in the field of narrative and communication,” said Andrade, for whom climate change got mixed up with Brazil’s political polarization. “The environmental agenda has become a leftist, communist, socialist agenda — which is worrying.”
Brazil elects record-high number of Indigenous mayors, vice mayors & councilors
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