1. Brazil's environment minister quits 
By Jonathan Wheatley in São Paulo

Published: May 14 2008

Brazil's environment minister has resigned after becoming increasingly isolated within the government.

Marina Silva, who rose from poverty in the Amazon state of Acre to become a global figurehead for environmental activists, resigned late on Tuesday in a manner typical of her way of operating: she wrote to President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva and immediately announced her decision to the media, leaving no room for possible negotiation.

The final straw for Ms Silva appears to have been the appointment of Roberto Mangabeira Unger, the minister for strategic affairs, to take charge of a new plan for sustainable development in the Amazon.

But during five years in the job she found herself in growing conflict with ministers pressing for the approval of infrastructure projects, many of which have been held up by the long process of obtaining environmental licences.

The most visible such project concerns the River Madeira in the Amazon, where two hydroelectric generating plants are to be built against fierce resistance from indigenous people and environmental groups. Mr Lula da Silva irritated Ms Silva by commenting that Brazil's economic development was being held up "for the sake of a few fish".

Many environmentalists were dismayed by Ms Silva's departure from government, which came days after a landowner in the Amazon had a conviction for ordering the killing of a US missionary nun overturned.

Ms Silva described the ruling in the case of Dorothy Stang, apparently murdered in 2005 for her activism on behalf of landless family farmers, as "lamentable".

In a statement, Greenpeace, the international environmental group, said Ms Silva had "taken the credibility of Lula's government with her". It said: "With her exit, a faction of the government which is pressing for economic development at any cost . . . has won a major victory against those who seek to reconcile development with sustainability."

Others will be less alarmed. Ms Silva was criticised by many for seeing conservation as a "zero-sum game" and for her opposition to initiatives attempting to reconcile the interests of ranchers and farmers with conservation.

No replacement had been announced on Wednesday.

2 . Environmental cloud over Silva's exit seen to clear
By Jonathan Wheatley in São Paulo

Published: May 18 2008

Brazil will get a new environment minister this week amid a storm of controversy over the departure of his predecessor.

Marina Silva, who held the job for five years, stepped down last week after becoming increasingly isolated within government. Her resignation caused dismay among environmental activists around the globe.

It is easy to see why. Ms Silva has a powerful personality and a straight-talking determination that helped her overcome poverty, disease and illiteracy in her childhood and adolescence in the Amazon state of Acre. In rising to the ministry and, in effect, the guardianship of more than half of the world's surviving tropical rainforest, she showed a readiness to tackle the loggers and farmers who have cleared 1m sq km of land in the Amazon in recent decades.

Her departure has been seen as clearing the way for this destruction to continue unchecked. But Ms Silva's going may not precipitate the disaster many have predicted. She was remarkably unsuccessful in her job, losing one battle after another to the "developmentalists" in President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva's government and, most recently, antagonising farmers and ranchers, many of whom had begun to adopt more responsible practices.

"For the environmental movement, she was the best minister we've ever had, no doubt about it," says Paulo Moutinho, head of Ipam, an Amazon research institute in Brasília. He counts among her big achievements the formulation of a forest management programme and the fact that 11 different ministries now share responsibility for the environment.

"She changed the government's way of thinking," he says. "Five years ago it hated even talking about deforestation." Now Brazil is leading moves to get international funding to pay for environmental services provided by forest preservation.

But in terms of battles fought and lost – over genetically modified crops, Brazil's third nuclear reactor and many others – Ms Silva was a failure. Most damaging, perhaps, will be the antagonism she has sparked over what appears to be a worsening pace of deforestation on the southern rim of the Amazon, after three years of substantial improvement. Ms Silva's punitive measures especially irritated Blairo Maggi, governor of Mato Grosso state, where most of the worst-affected counties are located. Mr Maggi is one of the world's biggest producers of soya and in recent years has gone from villain almost to hero of the environmental movement for his leadership of a soya moratorium, under which traders have stopped buying the crop from recently deforested land.

Ms Silva opposed moves to help farmers and ranchers conform with the law, insisting they should be punished. Yet many producers say they are forced into criminality by legal inconsistencies and that her tough line will undermine initiatives encouraging them to replant sensitive areas. Ms Silva's successor is Carlos Minc, formerly environment secretary in the state of Rio de Janeiro, where he earned a reputation for cutting red tape holding up environmental licences for infrastructure projects. He has promised less bureaucracy but greater rigour in the licensing process and has also pledged to continue Ms Silva's policies unchanged. His biggest challenge will be to deliver results as successfully as Ms Silva raised awareness of environmental issues.

Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2008