As Brazil hosts COP30, is it a climate champion or nature foe?

• President vowed to reach net zero deforestation
• Infrastructure projects expected to further rainforest loss
• Brazil aims to become world's fourth largest oil producer

BELEM, Brazil - As Brazil hosts COP30, the climate commitments of President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva will come under scrutiny, as he has sought to position the country as an environmental champion yet is advancing development projects in the Amazon rainforest.

World leaders, with the glaring exception of U.S. President Donald Trump, are set to gather in Brazil's Amazon rainforest city of Belém for the U.N. COP30 climate summit from November 10-21.

On the agenda is how to speed up a green energy transition away from fossil fuels, address the climate finance gap for low-income countries and protect forests and biodiversity.

Criticism by environmentalists and Indigenous leaders is likely to land on Lula, who has branded Brazil as a climate-friendly nation but has plans to ramp up oil drilling, roads and railway development in the vast Amazon rainforest.

"There's this logic throughout the last decades that sees the forest as a hindrance to development," said Tarcísio Feitosa of the Forests & Finance Coalition, a group that tracks deforestation funding.

"Lula's government has not changed anything," he said.

Speaking to the COP30 Leaders Summit on Thursday, Lula said: "In spite of our difficulties and contradictions, we need road maps ... to reverse deforestation and overcome dependency to fossil fuels."       

Roads and a railway

At the beginning of Lula's most recent term in 2023, the government announced plans to repave an 885-km (550 miles) road across one of the best preserved tracts of the rainforest.

The government is also committed to building the Ferrogrão railway, which international traders want for transporting soybeans and grains through the forest for export.

Just last month, Brazil's environmental agency Ibama announced it authorised state-run oil giant Petrobras to conduct exploratory drilling in the environmentally sensitive deep waters near the mouth of the Amazon river.

The authorisation came after years of pressure from lawmakers, Brazil's energy sector and Lula himself, who had criticised Ibama for deferring drilling requests.

Environmentalists fear Petrobras' potential success in the region will open the way for drilling in dozens of other oil-rich areas leased to Petrobas and international companies that are undergoing licensing processes.

Such a consolidation of the Amazon as a key frontier for fossil fuel drilling could pose a severe threat to the region's vulnerable ecosystem, they warn.

"Leakage is intrinsic to oil drilling.... We'll certainly see contamination and impact on biodiversity if exploration is done at scale along the Amazon coast," said Nicole Figueiredo, head of Arayara International Institute, an environmental group.

Defending Petrobras at a news briefing earlier this month, Lula said the company has invested in and is "committed to the energy transition."

Deforestation infrastructure

The policies that push for development in the rainforest contradict commitments made by Lula in 2023, when it was announced that Brazil would aim to achieve net zero deforestation by 2030.

At the same time, the government announced its intention to turn Brazil into the world's fourth biggest oil producer, up from seventh, by the same date.

Government data released last week showed deforestation in the rainforest fell 11% in the 12 months through July, compared with the same period a year earlier, hitting an 11-year low.

In Brazil's Cerrado savanna, a key agribusiness frontier, deforestation fell more than 11% in that same period, to a six-year low.

But environmental groups like Brazil's Climate Observatory are wary that Lula's administration will advance large-scale infrastructure projects to make room for more pastures and grain crops.

"Infrastructure has historically been a facilitator of deforestation by granting land-grabbers and farmers access to forest areas," said Laíde Costa, who fishes in the Amazon's Xingu River and is an educator at Xingu Vivo, a movement working to protect the basin.

"There's a great contradiction in the government saying it wants to end deforestation while it's a big promoter of deforestation through these projects," she said.

Deforestation and greenhouse gases from Brazil's 240 million strong cattle herd already position it as the world's sixth largest carbon emitter, according to the European Union's Emissions Database for Global Atmospheric Research.

Both the Ferrogrão railway and the road-paving project have faced legal and licensing hurdles for years.

Nonetheless, in July, the government said it expects to initiate the bidding process to build Ferrogrão in early 2026, and in September Lula said the government was close to "a definitive deal" with environmentalists for the road paving.

Road building plays a central role in deforestation, research shows.

According to a 2014 report in the Biological Conservation Journal, 95% of deforestation in the Amazon, where most tree cover loss takes place, occurred within 5.5 km (3.4 miles) of a road or 1 km (0.6 mile) of a navigable river.

Observers say Lula's push for oil drilling and infrastructure projects could overshadow funding commitments to be made at COP30.

Lula is expected to announce the launch of his proposed Tropical Forest Forever Facility, a $120 billion fund to help protect global tropical forests.

(Reporting by Andre Cabette Fabio; Editing by Anastasia Moloney and Ellen Wulfhorst.)