On 4 October, Brazilians will go to the polls to elect a president and government. Former president Jair Bolsonaro, under house arrest, cannot run. But his son Flávio is on the ballot.
If elected, the 45-year-old senator is widely expected to govern as his father did, which is sparking fears for the future of the Amazon rainforest. During Jair Bolsonaro’s presidency between 2019 and 2023, deforestation in the Amazon soared, reaching a 15-year-high in 2021. If anything, the signs are that it’s going to be far worse,” says Claudio Angelo, international policy coordinator at Brazil’s Climate Observatory.
With the younger Bolsanaro currently embroiled in a corruption scandal, the environment has received relatively little attention during campaigning “But for the rest of the world, the major question here is the Amazon,” says Philip Fearnside, an ecologist at Brazil’s National Institute for Amazonian Research (INPA). The Brazilian Amazon’s 4.2 million square kilometres of rainforest regulate global climate patterns and hold huge stocks of carbon – roles that are increasingly important as climate change accelerates. If the forest collapses, he says, the associated increase in emissions “would be the straw that breaks the camel’s back”.
Annual Amazon deforestation surged from 7536 square kilometres in 2018, before Bolsonaro took office, to 11,594 square kilometres in 2022, shortly before he departed. Experts say the former president encouraged a wave of land-grabbing and illegal mining with his pro-development rhetoric and gutted environmental agencies so they were powerless to stop invaders. Since returning to office in 2023, Lula has restored the power of environmental agencies, halving Amazon deforestation to 5731 square kilometres between August 2024 and July 2025.
Deforestation could trigger Amazon tipping point in the 2030s In a recent TV interview, Flávio Bolsonaro refused to say that climate change existed, instead referring to “extreme climate events” and “cyclical periods”. And during his time as a senator, he proposed legislation that critics said threatened Brazil’s native vegetation. Given this record, and his close ties to his father – and to Donald Trump – experts are concerned that his election would be followed by an increase in deforestation rates.
Stark photos show quest for profit cutting swathes through the Amazon Flávio Bolsonaro’s campaign also pledges zero illegal deforestation by 2029. One is to actually stop deforestation. The other, more likely way, is to just legalise the deforestation that’s going on,” says Fearnside.
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