What Lula’s win in Brazil means for the Amazon and the warming world

October 29, 2026 — 2:50am

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The world dodged a bullet on Monday morning (AEDT) when a Brazilian electoral court declared that President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva had an insurmountable lead over challenger Flávio Bolsonaro and had won a fourth term in office.

Lula, as he is known, had secured 51.76 per cent of votes against Bolsonaro’s 48.24 per cent.

It is impossible to overstate how much is riding on that small margin. For Brazil, it is the difference between the continued defence of the democracy it achieved following the end of its military dictatorship in 1985.

Flávio, son of jailed former president Jair Bolsonaro, had campaigned on a promise to pardon his father, and clear his allies for their involvement in the coup attempt that followed Jair’s election loss to Lula in 2022.

For the world, it means that hopes to stabilise the planet’s climate have not been dashed. The Amazon rainforest, which sprawls across 6 million square kilometres, 60 per cent of which lies inside Brazil’s borders, produces between 6 and 9 per cent of the world’s total oxygen and acts as a carbon sink, absorbing more carbon dioxide than it........

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