Brazil – The Environment, Lula and Marina Silva. “There is nothing as powerful as an idea whose time has come”: Marina Silva’s Unwinnable But Noble Bid for the Brazilian Presidency, and Why it Matters

When Marina Silva was still Brazil’s environment minister, she took a trip to the Xingu River in the Amazon. On the day she began her travels, José Dirceu, President Lula’s incorrigible former chief of staff, invited Germano Rigotto, the governor of Rio Grande do Sul, to fly to Brasilia. The governor has strong ties with agribusiness, and his political clout would be useful in lobbying for transgenic crops. Dirceu’s invitation was strategic– he wanted to make the most of Marina’s absence. The event shows how far Marina, the Green Party’s (PV) presidential candidate in the October 3rd elections, has taken the environmental debate in Brazilian politics. Although her cause – the environment – has gained momentum due to its urgency, Marina has no prospect for winning the presidency. Her voter base is composed of a number of small, disparate interest groups, who gravitate towards her for different reasons, a concern with the environment being only one of them. Nevertheless, Marina Silva’s presence in the campaign is as significant as the result of the elections. To talk about her is to talk about the conundrum Brazil is facing as its economy grows, the environment – to a vital extent the source of such growth – is threatened and the country’s role in the world becomes more and more central. She deserves the attention of anyone implicated or merely interested in Brazil’s future.

Reminiscing About the Present

These are interesting times for Brazilian politics, times when a desire for more of the same coincides with demands for radical change, with both waves stimulated by the same factors: stability and growth. The statistics of social progress in Brazil are remarkable. The number of people living in poverty has fallen by 20 million under Lula, from 49.5 million (or 28.5% of the total) in 2003 to 29 million (16% of the total population) in 2008, according to calculations by Marcelo Neri, a social-policy expert at the Rio de Janeiro based Fundação Getulio Vargas. Even allowing for an expected slowdown, the economy will have grown by about 8% in the year before the elections in October. Inequality, a plague in Brazil, is also declining: according to The Economist magazine, the Gini coefficient, a standard statistical measure of inequality, has fallen steadily since 2001 (though it remains very high by international standards). When the economy is doing this well, it is difficult for voters to accept that there is room and need for change. Most Brazilians will vote for Dilma Rousseff or José Serra, the two mainstream candidates who will maintain Brazil’s orthodox development strategy. Fewer voters see Marina’s environmentally-conscious development ideas as the best way to guarantee the continuation of the present level of growth in the long term. They see that times are good but the status quo is not. There is also a dimension of political protest to her success: many of her voters are disillusioned with the Worker’s Party (PT) record, and they see in her candidacy a chance to make their voices heard. The less cynical of these also find in her political character the kind of moral uprightness that gives legitimacy to politics in a time when politicians have little credibility with the public. Regardless of why voters chose her as their candidate, she now has a platform to defend and increase the visibility of environmental sustainability.

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This analysis was prepared by COHA Research Associate Luiza Mello Franco