Flávio Bolsonaro’s advance in Brazil’s election is grim jolt for climate campaigners

More fire, more ash, more crime, more death. And a globally important ecosystem driven ever more rapidly towards a point of no return.

That is the prospect for the Amazon rainforest for at least the next four years if Flávio Bolsonaro holds on to the lead he established this week in the first round of Brazil’s presidential election.

This appears to be of far more concern to the outside world than to voters in Latin America’s biggest, richest and most biodiverse nation.

The far-right son of the former president and jailed coup-monger Jair Bolsonaro won 47% of the vote, putting him in pole position before the 25 October runoff with the incumbent, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, who was backed by 44.2%.

The result is an unnerving jolt to climate and nature campaigners. Taken out of context, this appears to be a vote against the forest. The current administration of Lula (as the veteran Brazilian president is best known) has reduced deforestation in the Amazon by almost 50%. But that success secured little noticeable electoral traction for either Lula or pro-forest candidates in other polls held the same day. The former environment minister Marina Silva lost a bid for the Senate and Joenia Wapichana, a former head of Brazil’s Indigenous affairs agency, Funai, failed to win a seat in Congress. Out of 57 Indigenous candidates, only two won.

Flávio Bolsonaro, meanwhile, is the heir to the political legacy of his father, Jair Bolsonaro, a former army captain whose four years in power resulted in a 59.5% increase in Amazon deforestation, roughly equivalent to destroying 2bn trees.

If he wins, Bolsonaro has promised to free his father, who was imprisoned for plotting a military coup and attempting to annihilate democracy in Brazil. he has said that his father could have any position he wants in his administration.

Flávio Bolsonaro has shown that he will be just as willing as his father to dismantle protections for climate and nature and allow illegal miners, loggers and land grabbers to invade Indigenous territories. As a lawmaker, he backed a 2019 bill to eliminate requirements for landowners in the Amazon to conserve a proportion of native vegetation. In his manifesto, he completely ignored climate change. And he has courted support from some of the most predatory landowners in the rainforest.

He is also part of a movement – Bolsonarism – that is geared towards maximising profits for extractive industries regardless of the environmental cost. Take its victorious candidate for the Amazonian state of Pará, Daniel Santos, who was fined $275,000 for deforestating 280 hectares (692 acres) of his land without authorisation and is now promising to waive such penalties. As a result of Sunday’s election, Bolsonarists now control seven of the nine states in the Brazilian Amazon, and could win an eighth in the runoffs.

Bolsonarist influence in the legislature, which is dominated by agribusiness interests, is also growing. Jair’s brother, Eduardo, and mother-in-law, Michelle, were elected to the senate, while an uncle and brother won seats in the lower house of deputies. Even before the election, Congress had been pushing hard to weaken environmental protections. Now it will be almost impossible to stop, particularly given the current chaos in the supreme court, which has been a partial check on untrammelled expansion by miners, ranchers and monoculturalists. Against these forces, Lula would struggle to govern even if he wins the runoff.

As a result, it is not just the Amazon that is in peril, but all of Brazil’s biomes, its traditional peoples and the stability of the global climate. The question now is why voters paid so little heed to these concerns.

That inquest is already under way. Many focus on the influence of social media, which has been far more effectively utilised by the far right. During the Bolsonaro administration, his sons were part of the so-called hate cabinet that spread fear and disinformation via WhatsApp groups and other online channels – Bolsonaro’s second son, Carlos, was indicted by federal police for leading the group. Environmentalists were often the target.

Another factor is the expansion of US-style Pentecostalism, which is steadily supplanting Catholicism across Brazil, particularly in the Amazon. The political and environmental consequences of that religious shift can be seen by comparing the pro-nature treatise of the past two popes with the sermons of many evangelical preachers who encourage followers to seek wealth today as much as, if not more, than following moral creeds to ensure a good afterlife.

Lula, 80, has been slow to adapt. Although he is arguably the most iconic and successful Latin American politician of the 21st century, his messaging seems less attuned to the people than it was in his heyday. The Workers party has struggled in an era of weaker unions and in some ways been the victim of its own success – with education and social policies that raised millions out of poverty and created greater expectations for consumption and entrepreneurism; and huge subsidies to farmers, who now support the right wing because they chaff at environmental limits.

Tied into all of those explanations are the geopolitics of the climate and nature crisis, which is exacerbating great power rivalry between the US and China and amplifying extreme ideologies as much as extreme weather. In this light, the Brazil election is just the latest in a broader pattern of the far right taking control to expand extractivism despite growing evidence that the capitalist economy is breaking planetary boundaries. In the past two years, this has seen Donald Trump rip apart environmental regulations in the US and treat the rest of the Americas as his sphere of influence. Argentina was already onboard. Venezuela has been invaded for its resources, while Colombia, Peru and Chile have all seen a sharp shift to the right.

Will Brazil be the next domino to fall to Trumpism and its bonfire approach to nature? The Bolsonaro family certainly hope so. Jair went so far as to salute the US flag. His son Eduardo urged the US to apply tariffs on Brazilian people to “punish” the government for imprisoning his father. The Brazilian intelligence agency has warned the US was trying to interfere in the election.

That election isn’t over yet. Lula stands a small chance if he can win over the many millions of voters who chose not to mark their ballots for either candidate. But the odds are stacked against him. Most of the eliminated candidates were on the right so their supporters are more likely to switch to Bolsonaro. No first round leader has ever failed to win the runoff of a Brazilian presidential election.

Voters, of course, are allowed to change their minds. Either on 25 October or, constitutionally, in four years’ time. But for how much longer will that be possible? If Bolsonaro wins, it won’t just be Lula that is finished, it could also be the Amazon and democracy itself.