Lula da Silva has won a fourth term as President of Brazil, and Ursula von der Leyen says democracy has won in Brazil. But things are never simple. Donald Trump says it looked like “another rigged election”. Flávio Bolsonaro, son of the jailed former president, announced he wants the result annulled, before boarding a plane to the US despite a Brazil Supreme Court order to surrender the travel documents.
This week, Christiana Figueres and Tom Rivett-Carnac ask how much of his forest agenda Lula can get past the most conservative Congress since the 1980s, and what to make of reports that Washington is floating Viktor Orbán for UN Secretary-General.
Just days before the vote, satellite data showed the Brazilian Amazon had lost 3,335 square kilometres of forest in a year, the lowest since records began in 1988. The global picture is grimmer. The world promised to end deforestation by 2030, and since 2021 it has cleared 10.7 million hectares more than its own pathway allowed. That’s an area roughly the size of Iceland that should still be forest.
Christiana speaks with Nicola Ranger, Executive Director of Earth Capital Nexus and Professor in Practice at the Grantham Research Institute at LSE. In GDP terms, a forest is still worth what you get for cutting it down. Bond markets seem to disagree: Nicola’s research finds countries that degrade their nature are paying more to borrow. Why are the poorest countries paying the most? And will the money for the Tropical Forest Forever Facility arrive in time to change the sums?
Tom, who lives in a country with 13% forest cover, wants to know how Costa Rica nearly tripled its own. And if forests were once thought too big to fail, are we now ready to treat them as too critical to lose?
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🌳 Readthe Forest Declaration Assessment 2026, the annual check on the 2030 forest goals, which found around 7 million hectares lost in 2025 and $410 billion a year going to potentially harmful farm subsidies
🛰️ ReadAl Jazeera on Brazil’s record-low Amazon deforestation, the satellite figures from Brazil’s space agency showing clearing down 42% in a year and 71% since 2022
💰 Understandthe race to fund the Tropical Forest Forever Facility, the Brazil-led fund still chasing its first $10 billion, with at least 20% of payments ring-fenced for Indigenous peoples and local communities
📉 ReadKicking away the green ladder, Nicola’s research with Alexander Wollenweber and Dieter Wang, which finds nature degradation raises government borrowing costs, by up to three times the average in lower-income countries
🌧️ ExploreToo big to fail, the Earth Capital Nexus paper arguing that some ecosystems are so central to the economy that we should monitor and protect them like critical infrastructure
🇨🇮 DiscoverCôte d’Ivoire’s sustainability-linked finance framework, which ties the country’s borrowing to keeping forest loss below 300,000 hectares between 2025 and 2030
🐟 ExploreTrase, which follows the soy, beef, palm oil and cocoa linked to deforestation through global supply chains, all the way to the countries that buy them
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Senior Producer: Ben Weaver-Hincks
Assistant Producer: Saoirse Wilson
Showrunner: Caitlin Hanrahan
This is a Persephonica production for Global Optimism and is part of the Acast Creator Network.
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