Marina Silva steps down as Brazil's environment minister to run for Congress

SAO PAULO — Brazil's Environment Minister Marina Silva, a globally recognized climate leader, said she was stepping down Wednesday from her role in President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva’s administration to run for Congress later this year.

Under Brazilian election law, ministers must leave office six months ahead the Oct. 4 national election. Silva will be succeeded by João Paulo Ribeiro Capobianco, an environmentalist who has been serving as executive secretary at the Ministry of the Environment and Climate Change.

“I fulfilled the tasks assigned to me, which involved rebuilding and moving forward Brazil’s environmental policy following years of decline,” she said in an Instagram post.

Silva, who was first elected to Congress in 1994 and again in 2022, added that she was resuming her mandate as a lawmaker and would work for Lula’s reelection.

It was the second time Silva served as the head of environmental policy under Lula. And, for the second time, she delivered a sharp drop in deforestation.

When she took office in 2023, deforestation had nearly doubled under former President Jair Bolsonaro, who ran the country from 2019 to 2022. Silva pledged to eliminate deforestation by 2030, and since 2022, policies implemented under her leadership have reduced forest loss by more than 50%.

“If nothing exceptionally negative happens, we should have, if not the lowest, one of the lowest deforestation rates in the Amazon’s recorded history,” said Marcio Astrini, executive director of Climate Observatory, a network of environmental nonprofit groups.

“There was also strong control of deforestation in the Cerrado, and a serious and ongoing policy to combat forest fires, which became very severe in 2023 and 2024 due to extreme drought,” Astrini added.

Bolsonaro, who is serving a 27-year sentence for attempting a coup, championed agribusiness interests that oppose the creation of protected areas such as Indigenous territories and push to legalize land grabbing.

His administration froze the creation of new protected areas, weakened environmental agencies and shifted forest management to the agriculture ministry. Under Bolsonaro, deforestation in Brazil’s Amazon reached a 15-year high in the year ending in July 2021, though the pace of destruction slowed slightly in the following 12 months.

Silva reorganized the operations of the Environment Ministry and federal environmental protection agencies, Astrini said. She also restructured the Amazon Fund, which received new contributions, including record levels of funding to support field inspections, allowing enforcement operations to resume.

“The environmental sector started working again in Brazil,” Astrini said. “That was the first major achievement: She put the house in order.”

Marina Silva was crucial for bringing the U.N. climate conference to Brazil in 2025 and has enormous authority on Brazil’s climate agenda, Astrini said, but her presence was not enough to stop legislation and policies that are seen as setbacks by environmentalists.

Last year, Brazilian lawmakers passed legislation to fast-track approval of strategic infrastructure projects. Licensing processes that previously took six or seven years and required three separate permits will now be completed within 12 months. President Lula also pressed for the start of exploratory offshore oil drilling at the mouth of the Amazon River, a highly sensitive region.

Silva was born in the Amazon and worked as a rubber tapper as a teenager. As environment minister during Lula’s first two terms, from 2003 to 2008, she oversaw the creation of dozens of conservation areas and helped implement a sophisticated anti-deforestation strategy, including major operations against environmental crimes and expanded satellite monitoring. She also helped design the Amazon Fund, the world’s largest international initiative to preserve the rainforest.

Silva resigned in 2008 after clashing with Lula as he moved to court farmers during his second term. The two later reconciled, and Silva backed Lula’s successful 2022 bid against Bolsonaro.