Brazil’s left-wing president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva has won a historic fourth term in Sunday’s presidential run-off, bringing relief to Indigenous groups and environmentalists.

The incumbent, of the Workers’ Party, took 51.79% of the vote against 48.21% for Flávio Bolsonaro, the senator and eldest son of the former president Jair Bolsonaro. Brazil’s president becomes the first candidate since the return to democracy in 1985 to win after trailing in the first round. 

The Bolsonaro campaign has threatened legal challenges and called for reviews that could seek to annul the result due to the Supreme Court justice Cristiano Zanin granting extensions to polling hours.

Over the course of his last term, Lula has reinstated key environmental policies after rollbacks from Jair Bolsonaro, contributing to a 43% reduction in deforestation by early 2023. His administration also updated Brazil’s Nationally Determined Contribution, which sets out its climate targets, to align with 2016 Paris agreement goals.

During the 2025 UN Ocean Conference in Nice, Lula pledged to increase the share of Brazil’s waters under protection from 26% to 30%, and to expand marine spatial planning and protection for mangroves and corals. In March 2026, he signed the designation of the Albardão National Park and a surrounding protected area on the southern coast, protecting almost 16,000 sq km and creating Brazil’s largest marine national park. 

Previously, environmental groups like SOSOceano have criticised the scope of Lula’s commitment to ocean protections.

Flávio Bolsonaro, like his father, denies the existence of anthropogenic climate change. 

Converse to Lula, his policies sought to build on the environmental deregulation of Jair Bolsonaro’s presidency, which saw openly anti-environmental figures put in charge of the Ministry of the Environment and Ibama (the Brazilian Institute for the Environment and Renewable Natural Resources), the blocking of environmental laws and a sharp rise in the annual deforestation rate.

Flávio Bolsonaro has also made clear his preference for agribusiness and industry over Indigenous land protections. At an agribusiness fair in Mato Grosso in 2026, Flávio Bolsonaro said: “If it’s up to our government, none of these reserves will be demarcated, because the State’s calling is production.”

The consequences of that style of approach were severe under his father, Jair Bolsonaro. The Yanomami Indigenous Land was overrun by an estimated 20,000 illegal gold miners, who turned the area’s watercourses into rivers of mud. The pollution killed the fish that sustained the Indigenous population and led to starvation, with images of emaciated Yanomami children shocking the world. Flávio Bolsonaro’s proposals are estimated to put almost 300 Indigenous Lands at risk.

Bolsonaro’s campaign also promised rapid offshore energy expansion, with fast-tracked licensing and private investment for oil exploration. That included the Equatorial Margin, off the mouth of the Amazon River, home to the world’s largest continuous stretch of mangroves and the Great Amazon Reef System, an ecosystem of about 9,500 sq km that science has only recently described.

Lula’s own record is not without tension. His government has itself opened the door to drilling in the very same area. Ibama granted Petrobras a licence in October 2025 for a well about 175km off the coast of Amapá, only 40km from the reef system, after rejecting the application three times. Petrobras plans to spend $3bn drilling 15 wells in the region. Campaigners say the licence sits uneasily with Lula’s wider ocean pledges. 

Environmental groups have also criticised the so-called “devastation bill”, which was pushed through Congress under Lula in 2025. The bill allowed “medium-impact businesses”, including mining and agriculture, to self-license through a simplified online declaration without full environmental impact studies. Environmentalists say it allows industry to police itself.

While Lula has won the presidency, he still faces a hostile conservative Congress, with questions remaining over how easily he will be able to deliver on the 30% target.

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