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Boats stranded over exposed sandbanksdue to drought at the Solimoes River, one of the largest tributaries of the Amazon River, during the most intense and widespread drought Brazil has experienced since records began in 1950, near Manacapuru, Amazonas state, Brazil, September 30, 2024.  © 2024 Sipa via AP Images

(São Paulo) – Brazil’s President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva should commit to a clear and time-bound phaseout of fossil fuels and robust measures to protect forests as it prepares to host the United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP30) in November 2025, Human Rights Watch said today in its World Report 2025.

For the 546-page world report, in its 35th edition, Human Rights Watch reviewed human rights practices in more than 100 countries. In much of the world, Executive Director Tirana Hassan writes in her introductory essay, governments cracked down and wrongfully arrested and imprisoned political opponents, activists, and journalists. Armed groups and government forces unlawfully killed civilians, drove many from their homes, and blocked access to humanitarian aid. In many of the more than 70 national elections in 2024, authoritarian leaders gained ground with their discriminatory rhetoric and policies. 

“The devastating floods, drought, and fires that plagued Brazil in 2024 are a reminder of the environmental and human rights toll of extreme weather events exacerbated by climate change,” said César Muñoz, Brazil director at Human Rights Watch. “The Lula administration has made progress in reducing the rate of Amazon deforestation, but it plans to invest massively in new oil and gas exploration and production that would worsen the global climate crisis.”

  • President Lula has said he wants to make Brazil a “sustainability giant.” Yet he also plans to invest about US$47 billion in fossil fuels by 2026, including new development of oil and gas production near the mouth of the Amazon River. Such production would contribute to greenhouse gas emissions, whether the fossil fuels are burned in Brazil or abroad.
  • Illegal deforestation, mining, land grabs, and associated violence continue to threaten the lives and livelihoods of Indigenous peoples and other forest-dependent communities.
  • Cattle raised in illegally deforested land continues to enter the supply chain of large meat companies, including for export. Yet the government has pushed back against the implementation of a European regulation that would encourage fully traceable supply chains—in Brazil and elsewhere—by restricting the purchase of commodities linked to deforestation and human rights abuses, including meat and leather.
  • The Lula administration has made progress in reducing deforestation of the Amazon rainforest, which is a key ecosystem to fight climate change. Deforestation has continued to drop, falling 31 percent from August 2023 through July 2024 compared with the same period the year before. But fires—intensified by drought—burned more than 29 million hectares of forests and other vegetation nationwide in 2024, as of November. Authorities believe many were deliberately set to clear land for cattle and crops.
  • Brazil’s chronic problems of police abuse, gender-based violence, and the need for stronger protections for children’s and disability rights, among others, continued through 2024.

The election of Donald Trump for a second term as United States president makes it even more pressing for Brazil to take a leadership role in the fight against climate change and in defense of human rights worldwide, Human Rights Watch said.

There is consensus, including from the International Energy Agency and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, that for governments to meet global climate targets there cannot be new oil, gas, or coal development. The Lula administration should play its part in limiting climate-related devastation on people and communities by beginning an immediate and fair phaseout of fossil fuels and scaling up protections for forests and forest-dependent peoples. It should also collaborate with European regulators and implement a system to track cattle and other agricultural commodities to undercut the economic incentives to destroy the Amazon, and hold accountable actors in the cattle industry responsible for illegal deforestation and land grabs of Indigenous territories and other local communities.

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