Guardian analysis draws seven lessons from Lula's runoff win

Amazon deforestation fell 71.2% under Lula after 59.5% Bolsonaro surge

The Guardian published an analysis this week arguing that Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva’s comeback victory in Brazil’s presidential runoff offers a playbook for social and environmental movements in countries facing elections, including the US, Spain and France. “Thank you, Brazil, for demonstrating how the far right can be trounced while protection for the Amazon is strengthened,” Jonathan Watts wrote. The result, he said, should provide “much needed inspiration and, more practically, a playbook” for campaigners elsewhere.

Lula defeated Flávio Bolsonaro — described in the analysis as his extreme-right challenger — in Sunday’s runoff, a result the piece says brought oceans of rapturous supporters onto the streets and thrilled conservationists, climate activists and social justice campaigners across the world. Watts wrote that, coming just weeks after the Lula administration announced a record fall in Amazon and Cerrado destruction, campaigners hope Brazil can now go on to achieve its target of zero deforestation by 2030 and continue to support a global transition away from fossil fuels. That, he said, would provide a huge boost to flagging global efforts to stabilise the climate and protect degraded ecosystems, and would set a remarkable example of leadership by the global south.

The first of Watts’s seven lessons is that politics matter. “There is no higher environmental priority than defeating the far right,” he wrote, calling it “a Trojan horse for extractivist – and often criminal – groups to capture states and erode protections for people, democracy and the environment.” He cited a 59.5% surge in Amazon deforestation during Jair Bolsonaro’s 2019-2022 term — the highest of any four-year presidency in Brazil — against a 71.2% fall during the Lula administration. Forest loss over the past year was 3,335 sq km, the lowest level since satellite measurements began in 1988, according to the analysis. Watts added that Lula “is not, by any means, an environmentalist,” having approved destructive projects himself, but “is a people person who listens to the voice of social movements.”

A second lesson, Watts wrote, is not to give up. Lula “was largely written off by the markets and some polls after his first-round defeat,” and no first-round loser had ever previously come back to win the runoff. Lula did so by securing an extra 10 million votes over three weeks, with the energy coming “from the streets and the forests”: social movements organised giant rallies in cities, while indigenous, riverine and quilombola groups in the Amazon travelled for hours — sometimes days — by boats or buses to reach polling stations.

Watts’s third lesson is to mobilise a campaign army. He wrote that the first round of Lula’s campaign had been “stodgy, old-fashioned and defensive” — traits, the analysis notes, that are also often applicable to environmental campaigns. The campaign was transformed during the runoff, when federal deputy André Janones launched a “Lula’s Army” WhatsApp group that used humorous memes, live streams and algorithmic outreach to seize digital territory that had long been dominated by the right. By voting day, the army had 10 million “soldiers,” about 8% of the electorate. Volunteers devoted hours posting stories and spreading messages across social media, speeding up the campaign’s response time and emotional impact, and everyone was instructed not to share or respond to posts by the opposition camp, according to the analysis.

A fourth lesson is to go on the offensive against US tech giants. Lula’s campaign accused Meta — which runs the Facebook, WhatsApp and Instagram social media platforms — of political favouritism towards Bolsonaro in its algorithms and AI tools, Watts wrote. Meta denied bias but acknowledged technical failures, and Brazil’s electoral court ordered corrective action. Among the most popular chants of Lula supporters, he wrote, was “Hey Meta, vai tomar no cu!” (Hey Meta, take it up the arse!). Many on the left, the analysis says, have blamed US social media platforms for spreading rightwing disinformation and fearmongering that caused recent electoral defeats in Colombia, Chile and Peru. Lula made clear that would not be allowed in Brazil: “We had to overcome foreign interference through digital platforms, which we will have to regulate. We cannot have a monstrously large corporation earning millions and billions paying no taxes to this country and trying to steer our election results.”

The fifth lesson is to reclaim the flag. Brazil’s green, yellow and blue national colours had been associated with Bolsonaro’s movement in previous elections, Watts wrote, but Lula seized them back by posing in a national football team strip while his “army” launched a campaign called “The green and yellow is ours.” Before voting day, millions of people across Brazil and the world — from Indigenous leaders in the Amazon to Hollywood celebrities and European football stars — flooded social networks with images of themselves in Brazil colours making an L (for Lula) sign with their thumb and little finger extended.

A sixth lesson is to increase social spending. Amazon protection may have galvanised conservationists, Watts wrote, but the far greater motivations for many Lula voters were economic: record low unemployment, robust wage growth, a 15% increase in “bolsa familia” poverty relief payments and a promise to raise the minimum wage. The importance of combining social justice with climate and nature action is widely recognised by Brazilian environmental groups, he added — without it, elections are lost and protests can erupt in the streets, as the world learned from France during the violent gilets jaunes (yellow vests) demonstrations of 2018.

The seventh lesson, Watts wrote, is to defend sovereignty, democracy and sustainability together. Lula and his army called out the interlinked threats posed by the Bolsonaro family’s “fealty to Donald Trump” — “now doubly confirmed by Flávio’s post-election flight to the US,” the analysis notes — along with what Watts describes as the “obsequience” to Trump, Bolsonaro’s desire to change the constitution and his promise to open up exploration of the Amazon and other biomes. Watts wrote that this reflects a global phenomenon: with seven of the planetary boundaries essential for the flourishing of life now breached, more and more people are affected by business activities that destabilise the climate, damage ecosystems and pollute the air, soil and rivers. That, he wrote, makes it harder for extractive companies to secure a social mandate and leaves them more inclined to either break the law or support extreme politics that override democracy.

Big battles lie ahead, the analysis cautioned. In the Amazon region itself, the analysis says, far-right members of Bolsonaro’s party have won the governorships of seven of the nine states and a large number of municipal mayorships. Watts wrote that Brazil’s congress is now dominated by agribusiness and mining interests that have set the political agenda in recent years and will push hard to allow more extractivist industries in indigenous lands, expand road-building, privatise rivers, weaken environmental protections and possibly attempt to impeach the president. Lula, alone among the leaders of main South American nations in not aligning with Donald Trump’s so-called “Shield of the Americas,” will also face pressure from Washington to channel critical minerals and other natural resources to the US, rather than selling to China or Europe, or leaving them in the ground, according to the analysis. On the planetary level, Watts wrote, Brazil faces the threat of accelerating global heating, which is pushing the Amazon ever closer to the point of no return.

Watts wrote that Sunday’s result will hopefully provide a little breathing space for the Amazon and other crucially important biomes, but the joy and hope Brazil has gifted the world will quickly fade “unless it inspires political change in other countries.” In that sense, he wrote, the biggest environmental impact of Lula’s victory may be the lessons it provides for campaigners elsewhere. Former environment minister Marina Silva pulled these threads together at the victory celebrations, saying Brazil had come together against these threats: “Long live the people who emerged from every corner of Brazil to sow hope for a future that is socially just, sovereign, democratic and sustainable.” Watts concluded: “Brazil has given the world a remarkable example of hope through action. Now it needs others to follow.”