This story was originally published by the Guardian and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration.

More fire, more ash, more crime, more death. And a globally important ecosystem driven ever more rapidly towards a point of no return. That is the prospect for the Amazon rainforest for at least the next four years if Flávio Bolsonaro holds on to the lead he established this week in the first round of Brazil’s presidential election.

This appears to be of far more concern to the outside world than to voters in Latin America’s biggest, richest, and most biodiverse nation.

The far-right son of the former president and jailed coup-monger Jair Bolsonaro won 47 percent of the vote, putting him in pole position before the October 25 runoff with the incumbent, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, who was backed by 44.2 percent.

The result is an unnerving jolt to climate and nature campaigners. Taken out of context, this appears to be a vote against the forest. The current administration of Lula (as the veteran Brazilian president is best known) has reduced deforestation in the Amazon by almost 50 percent.

The wrong outcome would imperil the Amazon, along with all of Brazil’s biomes, its traditional peoples, and the stability of the global climate.

But that success secured little noticeable electoral traction for either Lula or pro-forest candidates in other polls held the same day. The former environment minister Marina Silva lost a bid for the senate and Joenia Wapichana, a former head of Brazil’s Indigenous affairs agency, Funai, failed to win a seat in the nation’s congress. Out of 57 Indigenous candidates, only two won.

Flávio Bolsonaro is the heir to the political legacy of his father, Jair Bolsonaro, a former army captain whose four years in power resulted in a 59.5 percent increase in Amazon deforestation, roughly equivalent to........

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