The Brazilians will choose, Sunday, October 2, the course that their country will take for the next four years.
And they will decide if it will be greener.
Because on the environmental level, everything opposes the two favorites in the presidential election, the outgoing far-right head of state Jair Bolsonaro and the left-wing ex-president Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva.
Jair Bolsonaro intends to rely on the armed forces to fight against forest fires and deforestation in the Amazon.
In his program, the Liberal Party candidate promises "measures to reduce greenhouse gases" and recognizes that the fight against climate change is "inexorable" to preserve the future of the planet.
Promises that struggle to convince observers.
"Jair Bolsonaro's record is catastrophic because his government was anti-environmental. We are on an ultra-liberal ideology and for him, all laws in favor of the environment are only obstacles to production", summarizes François -Michel Le Tourneau, geographer and research director at the CNRS.
One of the most emblematic victims of this policy is the Amazon rainforest, 60% of whose surface is in Brazil.
Worrying signals have multiplied in recent weeks.
A group of Amazonian environmental organizations (RAISG) and the Coordination of Indigenous Organizations of the Amazon Basin (Coica) drew up an alarming observation, in a report published on September 6: the Amazon rainforest is reaching its "tipping point ".
Once it crosses it, it will no longer be able to regenerate and will turn into a drier ecosystem, comparable to that of a savannah.
When "agribusiness" comes before the planet
In question, in particular: the agricultural activity which has tripled since 1985 and which is responsible for 84% of the deforestation of the Amazon.
The NGO Greenpeace attributes this result to the policy of the current Brazilian president, an ardent defender of "agribusiness".
"Supported by Jair Bolsonaro since he came to power in 2019, agro-industrialists voluntarily set fire to the forest to free up the space needed for soy crops and livestock," reads a statement.
Environmentalists have reason to worry.
The world's largest rainforest has seen more wildfires in the first nine months of the year than in all of 2021, according to the National Institute for Space Research (INPE), a Brazilian research center which measures the deforestation of the Amazon.
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These fires have been particularly devastating this summer: "in August 2022, more than 33,000 fire outbreaks were recorded, the highest number since 2010" and "nearly 17,000 fires were recorded at the beginning of the month of September, in just one week," said Greenpeace.
Questioned on the subject Thursday, during the last televised debate of the campaign, Jair Bolsonaro denied in block.
"We haven't heard of any forest fires in the Amazon, other than the ones that usually happen," he said.
Jair Bolsonaro, whose father was a gold digger in the Amazon in the 1980s, is also openly in favor of another factor in the destruction of the forest: the expansion of mining activities, including in protected areas such as indigenous reserves.
"Jair Bolsonaro and his government have succeeded in rendering the state tools for environmental protection inoperative, for example by cutting funding from the Ministry of the Environment and its right arm, Ibama", adds the researcher François-Michel Le Tourneau.
"This means that the authorities can no longer carry out checks on the ground. It's exactly as if we imagined a highway without any police," continues the specialist.
Forget the old quarrels to "beat Bolsonaro"
In 2021, the budget devoted to public bodies for the preservation of the environment has, in fact, been divided by three compared to 2014, when it was the highest, according to a study carried out by the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro (UFRJ), with the NGO Socio-Environmental Institute (ISA).
Faced with this lackluster record, Lula has built his ecological program in opposition to that of his main rival.
The left-wing candidate pledges to implement a zero-tolerance policy against illegal gold panning, deforestation and fires in the Amazon.
In particular, he intends to rely on public bodies for the preservation of the environment such as Ibama.
Twenty days before the presidential election, the candidate of the Workers' Party also reconciled with his ex-minister of Ecology, Marina Silva, in order to "beat Bolsonaro".
The break dates back to 2008, following a disagreement between Marina Silva and Lula over the construction of the huge hydroelectric power station in Belo Monte, in the Amazonian state of Para.
A project launched by Lula and supported by Dilma Rousseff, at the time Prime Minister.
>> Deforestation in Brazil: Crossroads singled out by Mighty Earth
During Lula's first year in office, in 2003, deforestation in the Amazon had also reached an all-time high.
Some 27,772 km2 of forest had been razed, twice as much as the 13,038 km2 under Bolsonaro in 2021. But the Lula government then managed to gradually reduce this deforestation to historically low levels.
In 2010, when he left power, it was four times lower than in 2003.
Today, his re-election "would prevent the disappearance of 75,960 km2 of Amazonian forest by 2030, an area equivalent to that of Panama", concludes a recent study carried out by researchers from the University of Oxford. , the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA) and INPE for the specialized site Carbon Brief.
Reducing deforestation "would also significantly reduce Brazil's emissions if accompanied by a new forest restoration effort," they add.
The path promises to be strewn with pitfalls.
"Even if there is hope that Lula will take actions in the direction of ecology, the destructuring has been colossal and there will be a lot of work to come back", affirmed on, France culture, Nathalia Capellini, historian at the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies (IHEID) in Geneva.
"What will matter is to see which side the deputies lean on"
If in Brazil, the most decisive election is that of the President of the Republic, in total, five elections are organized on Sunday.
Brazilians will elect, for four years, state deputies, federal deputies and state governors.
A third of the 81 seats of senators are also to be filled, for eight years.
"What will matter is to see which Congress [composed of the Chamber of Deputies and the Federal Senate] will come out and which side will lean the parliamentarians", explains François-Michel Le Tourneau.
"The Brazilian Congress is generally very fragmented and the agricultural lobby is very powerful so it's a safe bet that this will determine future environmental policy, in both cases, for Lula and Bolsonaro", continues the geographer.
"In my opinion on the legal level, not much will happen but what could change, with the re-election of Lula, is that the Brazilian law on the preservation of the environment is finally applied".
A big step for the climate, after four years of Bolsonaro presidency.
Discover the webdoc devoted to the presidential election in Brazil © Graphic studio France Médias Monde
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