Less than a week after the COP30 climate summit concluded in Belém, Brazil’s powerful agribusiness and development interests in the National Congress pushed through changes that weaken protections for the Amazon's rivers, forests, and Indigenous communities. These new measures overrode President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva’s earlier vetoes, which had sought to safeguard Indigenous rights and environmental oversight in a licensing bill.

Experts like Sarah Sax from Climate Rights International note that these rollbacks are not modernization, but rather deregulation. The revised law now permits many projects to gain approval through self-declaration, bypassing thorough environmental impact assessments. It even allows for the retroactive legalization of deforested land without requiring restoration, effectively rewarding illegal activities. This opens the door for larger projects like dams and roads to proceed with minimal environmental review, increasing the risk of habitat destruction and forest fragmentation.

Astrid Puentes Riaño, the UN Special Rapporteur on the human right to a healthy environment, expressed alarm, stating the law may violate Brazil’s international commitments. She highlighted a global pattern where environmental assessments are wrongly viewed as obstacles to development. However, cutting these reviews directly contradicts scientific understanding of our planet's triple crisis: climate change, biodiversity loss, and toxic contamination. Environmental impact assessments are essential tools for preventing irreversible damage to water, air, biodiversity, and human health.

This battle in Brazil mirrors global climate policy tensions, where countries sometimes make grand promises at international summits but then prioritize economic development at home by weakening environmental rules. Scientific bodies like the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) consistently show that protecting ecosystems, healthy rivers, and Indigenous land rights are some of the most effective and cost-efficient climate mitigation strategies. They are not barriers to progress but cornerstones of long-term economic stability and public health.

The implications of Brazil’s actions are far-reaching. The Amazon rainforest is critical for global climate and weather patterns, influencing rainfall from the Andes to the U.S. Gulf Coast. Degradation of this vast ecosystem weakens these systems, intensifying droughts and storms globally. As one of the world’s largest carbon sinks, storing massive amounts of carbon, the Amazon’s continued deforestation and degradation risk pushing it past a tipping point. This would turn the forest from a climate ally into a driver of accelerated warming, as shown by recent research.

Brazil’s decision to weaken these protections, so soon after COP30, starkly illustrates the growing gap between international climate promises and national political realities. Indigenous leaders at COP30 reminded the world that “our land is not for sale,” emphasizing that protecting forests is a matter of survival, not abstract policy. The Amazon, and our planet, cannot afford continued indecision.