Expected to be part of the president’s (PT) platform in São Paulo, the minister of , , must leave the department amid fears that the election year will increase the .
It is common, experts point out, to observe the progress of the problem in election years, when sectors of agribusiness, especially those linked to Bolsonarism, inflame their discourse in search of votes. Marina herself admits that this is a point of attention.
In the case of soy, the moratorium is a commitment made by companies not to buy the product from farms and crops with deforestation. The agreement was suspended by Cade (Administrative Council for Economic Defense) in mid-2025, later reestablished in a decision by the Federal Court and is currently before the STF (Supreme Federal Court).
Amid the procedures, a series of companies have already publicly announced that they will leave the treaty.
Marina is tipped to run for the Senate in São Paulo alongside the Minister of Planning, Simone Tebet (MDB). She rules out the possibility of running for a seat in the Chamber of Deputies.
In place of the Minister of the Environment, the executive secretary of the department, João Paulo Capobianco, should be replaced.
“Brazilian environmental and climate policy is a State policy, led by President Lula and supported by clear guidelines, public goals and interministerial actions,” said the organization, in a note.
“Regardless of Minister Marina Silva’s eventual departure, the ministry, which has a highly qualified technical staff, will remain fully committed to implementing this agenda, continuing the process of institutional reconstruction.”
Ministers must leave their positions by April 4th to be able to contest the 2026 elections.
Marina is tipped to run in the election for PT, PSB, PSOL and PV, but she does not rule out remaining in Rede, an acronym that she founded and which is experiencing an internal split.
The elections for the party’s presidency, in 2025, ended with a victory for federal deputy Heloísa Helena’s group over Marina’s.
The claim, however, was contested. At the end of January, the Rio de Janeiro Court recognized irregularities in the process and annulled its result, in a decision favorable to the minister, who is therefore still evaluating the possibility of remaining in the acronym.
She has said that nothing will be defined without talking to Lula and that the priority is to form the best composition in São Paulo alongside ministers Fernando Haddad (Finance), who should run for government, Tebet, Márcio França (Entrepreneurship) and vice-president Geraldo Alckmin (PSB).
Márcio França was already governor of the state and could be a candidate for the position again, while Alckmin has already publicly announced that he will leave the Ministry of Industry at the beginning of April — to interlocutors, he states that he only accepts running as Lula’s vice president, ruling out a state position.
The PSB began conversations to have Marina from mid-2025, projecting the race for the Senate.
“We have a lot of respect and admiration for her trajectory, she is one of the greatest figures in Brazil and the world recognizes her. She has the size to be a candidate for whatever she wants”, said federal deputy Tabata Amaral (PSB-SP), one of the interlocutors in this negotiation.
The PT formally invited Marina at the beginning of January, and high-ranking members of the party already consider her arrival as certain, to join the race for the Senate.
Her caption, in 2009, took place amid the debate for the construction of the Belo Monte hydroelectric plant, in Pará, of which she was a staunch opponent.
The distance with the PT increased during the 2014 elections, when Marina ran for President and was harshly attacked by Dilma Rousseff’s (PT) campaign.
A , when the PT member formed a broad front against the then president Jair Bolsonaro (PL), who ended up defeated and is now in prison for leading an attempted coup d’état.
In Marina he stressed that this was a political and programmatic movement and that, from the point of view of personal relationships, they never left each other. She was elected federal deputy and later resumed the Environment portfolio.
In the three years of government so far, Marina has restructured environmental management, scrapped by the Bolsonaro government. Forest destruction has plummeted by half since 2022 and, according to the minister herself, could end 2026 with the lowest rate in history.
The PPCDAM (Deforestation Prevention and Control Plan) was reactivated and the department created similar strategies for all other biomes in the country. In 2025, .
The ministry is already planning the seventh and new phase of PPCDAM for the cycle between 2027 and 2030, betting on the continuity of environmental policy — which depends, to a large extent, precisely on the results of the elections.
After four years of strengthening actions to combat illegal deforestation, the new phase would focus on economic incentives and other mechanisms to reduce legal and authorized degradation, and encourage small producers to preserve the forest. The goal is to eliminate deforestation by 2030.
