“Brazil activists decry green rollbacks as senate passes ‘devastation bill’”, 22 May 2025

Environmental activists in Brazil have decried a dramatic rollback of environmental safeguards after the senate approved a bill that would dismantle licensing processes and increase the risk of widespread destruction.

The upper house passed the so-called “devastation bill” with 54 votes to 13 late on Wednesday, paving the way for projects ranging from mining and infrastructure to energy and farming to receive regulatory approval with little to no environmental oversight.

The bill now returns to the lower house for final approval…

The initiative proposes overhauling Brazil’s rigorous environmental licensing procedures to make the system simpler and more efficient…

“It’s like getting rid of the brakes in a moving vehicle,” said Natalie Unterstell, the president of the Instituto Talanoa climate policy thinktank. She said the bill jeopardises Brazil’s commitments of eradicating deforestation by 2030 and reaching net zero by 2050.

The proposed legislation would allow some projects to renew permits through a self-declaration process and loosen requirements for high-impact ventures such as mining, allowing potentially harmful developments to move forward without serious considerations of their impacts on things like water reservoirs, deforestation or local communities…

The ISA calculated that the approval of the law would directly threaten more than 3,000 protected areas, including land occupied by Indigenous people and Afro-descendant quilombola communities, and put 18m hectares (44.5m acres) of forest at risk...

Environment minister Marina Silva described the approval of the bill as a “death blow” to Brazil’s climate efforts, but other members of Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva’s government had previously expressed support for the measure, saying it would help attract investment…