“And now, reckless projects, including the BR-319 highway, the Ferrogrão railroad, and the disastrous proposal to drill for oil at the mouth of the Amazon, push the rainforest closer to collapse.”
One of the most striking contradictions is Brazil’s approval of oil exploration at the mouth of the Amazon River, on the so-called Brazilian equatorial margin.
Despite global calls to phase out fossil fuels, state-owned giant Petrobras received environmental authorisation from Brazil’s environmental agency, Ibama, to drill an exploratory well in Block 59, about 500 km from the river’s mouth, in an area home to sensitive ecosystems, including the Great Amazon Reef System, and mangroves.
Environmentalists warn about the risks of such project and the tragic consequences of an oil spill.
Ancestral
How can a country host a summit on climate action while expanding oil extraction in one of the world’s most biodiverse and climate-sensitive regions?
The contradiction is so glaring it almost seems deliberate, a reminder that climate diplomacy too often serves the optics of progress, it signals that the summit may serve branding more than change.
Brazil’s climate narrative also collapses when it comes to Indigenous rights.
The controversial “marco temporal” or “time frame”, a legislation backed by the agribusiness lobby (“ruralistas”), claims that Indigenous peoples can only claim land they physically occupied on 5 October 1988, the date when Brazil’s constitution came into force.
Entire Indigenous communities displaced before that date would lose their rights to ancestral territories.
Sidestepping
Though Brazil’s supreme court struck the bill down in 2023, congress soon passed Law 14.701/2023 to reimpose it, a legislative deceptiveness that undermines constitutional justice. For those who live by the forest, the stakes are existential.
UN experts have warned that the law could invalidate hundreds of land demarcations and accelerate deforestation.
Yet, at COP30 Indigenous delegates will likely appear on governmental panels, their presence used as proof of inclusion, even as their land rights are being eroded at home.
As if this weren’t enough, in July 2025, Brazil’s congress passed the so-called “devastation bill”, officially bill 2159/2021.
This legislation radically loosens environmental licencing rules, allowing many projects to proceed under weaker impact assessments, sidestepping oversight, and handing more authority to states and municipalities.
Bioeconomy
Human rights groups have warned that the bill puts people and the planet at risk by weakening protections related to Indigenous and Quilombola communities.
Although President Lula vetoed or amended 63 of the bill’s nearly 400 articles in August, observers warn that the remaining provisions still pose a serious threat.
Aware that congress could overturn his vetoes, Lula appeared to strike a delicate balance, seeking to appease both the right and the left while maintaining an appearance of neutrality.
To host a climate summit whilst your government is passing this kind of law is to declare war on credibility. A country can’t simultaneously chair the climate table and fast track deregulation that invites deforestation and community displacement.
Another of president Lula’s proudest talking points is Brazil’s “bioeconomy revolution”.
Pulped
At the BRICS Business Forum, he declared: “Our countries can lead a new development model based on sustainable agriculture, green industry, resilient infrastructure, and the bioeconomy.”
It sounds visionary, but behind the slogans, the same extractive dynamics persist.
Large-scale soy, sugarcane, palm oil, and corn monocultures are expanding across the Amazon, justified as “renewable”, “green”, “clean”, “sustainable” biofuel crops, the “fuel of the future”.
Projects like Amazônia 4.0 promise sustainable innovation, yet risk replicating the colonial logic of resource extraction in a green disguise.
“The extension of this concept to the Amazon carries the inherent risk of it ending up being pulped and sold for profit,” warns researcher Ossi Ollinaho from the University of Helsinki.
Threats
Meanwhile, environmental policy expert, Jorge Rodriguez Morales, observes that: “Positioning bioenergy as a climate strategy has effectively justified broader policies supporting the biofuel industry and contributed to the greenwashing of Brazil’s climate policy.”
Meanwhile, another COP30 spotlight is on carbon markets, the supposed magic wand of climate action, but voluntary carbon offsets are now under intense scrutiny.
Research led by Dr. Thales West at Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam found that many REDD+ forest projects, once celebrated as a proof of progress, are built on “hope, not proof”, relying on shaky assumptions.
Nature reports that offset often “undermine decarbonisation by enabling companies and countries to claim reductions that don’t exist.
At the heart of the problem is the baseline scenario: exaggerated threats allow projects to sell more credits, even for forests never at risk.
Applause
“Even with the best intentions, if you follow the ‘wrong recipe’, you’ll probably not get the right result,” says Dr. West.
Certifications systems, paid by the very projects they audit, create conflicts of interest, while many credits fail to account for forest loss through fire, logging, or displacement.
The Suruí project in Brazil, once celebrated as an Indigenous-led conservation success, collapsed under illegal mining and land pressures, demonstrating that even well-designed offsets can’t succeed in a broken system.
Critics warn that offsets have become a form of greenwashing, letting airlines, tech firms, and luxury brands continue polluting.
Dr. West cautions: “Unless there’s a change in attitude among companies, governments, and organisations such as the UN, the market is likely to continue prioritising convenience over integrity.”
Lula’s international rhetoric remains powerful, his speeches about “saving the Amazon” still win applause in New York, London, Paris, and Davos, but power without integrity is just noise.
Hypocrisy
At COP30, the word “justice” will be repeated many times, but justice requires more than words, it requires action, alignment of policy and principle.
Brazil can’t host the world’s climate summit while giving licenses for oil at the mouth of the Amazon, while loosening land protections for Indigenous peoples and while fast-tracking environmentally sensitive projects under the “devastation bill”.
The Amazon is not just a forest, it’s the lungs of a continent, the keeper of “flying rivers” that bring rain and moisture across Brazil and other regions, a shield against climate chaos.
Destroy it, and the consequences ripple far beyond Brazil, bringing droughts, floods, climate instability, and even new pandemics.
The forest is already speaking in fires, in the smoke, in the disappearing rivers and threatened people. The world will hear COP30 speeches, but the forest hears actions, it hears what’s done, not what’s promised.
The Amazon has no more time for hypocrisy.
This Author
Monica Piccinini is a regular contributor to The Ecologist and a freelance writer focused on environmental, health and human rights issues.
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