Author Archive

Barbara Abrahao (Oxford School of Global and Area Studies)

Barbara is a doctoral candidate at the Oxford School of Global and Area Studies and a member of St Antony’s College. Barbara’s research interests include ethnography, the surging of an economy based on carbon metrics across the Brazilian Amazon, extractivism, traditional communities’ gardening practices and forest landscape.

Lula signalled new winds for Brazilian climate politics in his victory speech after winning the presidential election. In his words: “Brazil is ready to retake its leadership in the fight against the climate crisis, by protecting all its biomass, especially the Amazon rainforest”. During Lula’s first presidential mandate at the beginning of the 2000s, Brazil, and other countries led by progressive leaders across Latin America, expanded mega extractive projects to fund their distributive politics. These projects are responsible for environmental degradation and threats to local people’s health and lives until this day. However, Lula also has also great achievements. Between 2005 and 2012, Brazil registered the lowest illegal deforestation in the Amazon as a result of the implementation of the …