The Congress can overturn some or all of Lula’s vetoes with a majority in both houses and he would not be able to veto again. On Wednesday, senators indicated they wanted to hold a vote in both houses of Congress on Nov. 27 on the vetoes — only six days after diplomats are scheduled to leave Belém.
The Congress is likely to repeat its previous vote and overturn the president’s vetoes, said Suely Araújo, the former president of Brazil’s government forest protection agency, now a public policy coordinator at the Climate Observatory NGO.
“I really don’t think that Lula has power enough to stop this,” she said, adding:“I’m sure that we will have problems of deforestation increasing” if the vetoes are struck down. This view was echoed in a report by two of Brazil’s leading experts in environmental management who said it would “generate significant environmental degradation.”
Araújo said environmental groups were planning to take the issue to the Supreme Court. Mauricio Guetta, legal policy director at the campaign group Avaaz, said it would be “the worst environmental setback in our history.”
POLITICO contacted two lawmakers who support agribusiness, plus the Instituto Pensar Agropecuária, a non-profit group that represents the sector. None responded to requests to comment for this article.
Mato Grosso do Sul Governor Eduardo Riedel, from one of Brazil’s center-right opposition parties, reportedly told an event at the COP30 climate conference that the General Environmental Permitting Law, as it is known, reformed the planning system in a way that was vital for delivering projects at speed.