Brazil and COP30: Calling time on deforestation or agribusinesses as usual?

Paulina Flores-Martinez - Postdoctoral Research Associate, Department of Politics and International Relations, University of York

Tony Heron - Professor of International Political Economy, Department of Politics and International Relations, University of York

Ângela Camana - Postdoctoral Researcher, Graduate Program in Amazonian Agricultures at the Federal University of Pará (UFPA/Brazil)

Marília L.David - Lecturer, Graduate Program in Sociology at the Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul (UFRGS/Brazil)

Tomaz Fares - Lecturer, Department of Politics and International Relations, University of York 

Juggling the promotion of agribusiness and curbing of deforestation

Today, agribusinesses are the cornerstone of Brazil’s economy. In 2000, agricultural exports accounted for ~$14.4bn; by 2022, they soared to $142bn. A handful of commodities are responsible for this trend, including soybeans, green coffee, fresh beef, pulp and poultry. Alongside land speculation, these products are the key drivers of land conversion in Brazil. Domestically, the government relies on two major public instruments to manage and curb illegal land-use change - the Brazilian Forest Code and the Rural Environmental Registry. The technical and political capacities of State-level authorities to implement and enforce these instruments vary, with many states standing accused of being co-opted by agribusiness interests. Under the Temer and, especially, the Bolsonaro administrations, the blatant dismantling of the public environmental agenda was plain to see. To illustrate, the Plano de Ação para Prevenção e Controle do Desmatamento na Amazônia Legal, a programme aimed at curbing deforestation in the Amazon biome by 2030, was dismantled under the Bolsonaro government, despite deforestation plummeting 70% between 2003 and 2011. The plan was only reactivated in 2023. 

Hosting COP-30 offers Lula the ideal platform to showcase his government’s renewed environmental agenda, but the reality is that the Brazilian state as a whole remains highly ambivalent, with recent legislative moves and public policies undermining green pledges. For one, the Senate-approved PL 2159/2021 simplifies, to the point of quasi-nulifying, the procedures for environmental licensing. Civil society organisations have dubbed the law the “Devastation Bill,” given that it allows projects to obtain licenses automatically. Additionally, green instruments are overshadowed by the far larger sums allocated to the recently launched national policy, Plano Safra, a funding programme tailored to ‘further incentivise and strengthen Brazilian agribusiness’. While Plano Safra establishes a system in which producers adopting ‘sustainable practices’ will be eligible for preferential credit lines and other incentives, only about one-sixth of its total funding is directed jointly to the ministries with a strong focus on social and environmental stewardship (Ministry of Agrarian Development and Family Farming, Ministry of Health and Ministry of the Environment and Climate Change); instead, the vast majority is channelled to large-scale agribusiness through the Ministry of Agriculture and Livestock. The latter is frequently associated with the agribusiness sector interests and thus an indirect promoter of domestic deforestation. 

The agribusinesses' Babel of Green Promises

Brazilian agribusinesses are fully aware of the growing criticism pointing to their direct and indirect association with a range of environmental and social problems, and to a different and varying extent, they have reacted. At the same time, the sector’s internal heterogeneity encompasses conflicting positions, from those espousing ‘in-house’ solutions (corporate-led environmental governance instruments), to those explicit in outright climate denial. Among the former, an "environmentalization" process is synonymous with roundtables, sustainability standards and moratoria. An emblematic, and at least partially successful, example is the creation and implementation of the Amazon Soy Moratorium (ASM) in 2006, developed in response to international criticism and civil society advocacy. Alongside the ASM, a myriad of voluntary and non-binding mechanisms coexist. This cacophony of standards presents numerous opportunities for ‘forum shopping’ among Brazil’s agribusinesses when it comes to addressing deforestation and climate change. 

Overall, Brazil’s agribusinesses have moved toward a more confrontational stance on environmental regulation. This is most evident in their opposition to the EU’s EUDR initiative -- a directive that will require importers to verify that their supply chains are entirely deforestation free. At least two Ministers supported agribusiness in addressing a communication with the EU Commission calling for the postponement of the EUDR. Importantly, while agribusiness and their advocates in Brazil continue to push back against EUDR, the bigger story is China. In 2024, China imported approximately $31.5 billion, or 73% of the total, of soy from Brazil; by comparison, the EU imported approximately only $3.8 billion, or 9%. In other words, even if and when EUDR is implemented fully, in the very best case, it will mean Brazil's soy sector is split between a niche sub-sector, capable of supplying greener and more transparent agri-food commodities destined for the EU market, and a much larger ‘agribusiness-as-usual’ supplying China and the rest of the world. 

This year's COP comes at an opportune moment to show Brazil in the best possible light -  a regional power, capable of projecting a positive environmental message and global leadership on behalf of Latin America and the Global South as a whole. But the latest tensions reflected with CADE’s decision show that Brazil’s deforestation problems did not begin nor did they end with populist maverick Jair Bolsonaro. They are integral to Brazil’s ‘neo-extractivist’ development model, underpinned by a system of political patronage that not only implicates powerful agribusiness interests, but the state itself.