Al Jazeera Podcasts.

Today, will Brazil's president Luis Inacio Lula de Silva fulfill his promise to stop the Amazon rainforest from shrinking by 2030.

Last year, eight trees were cut down per second.

The progress he's made is undeniable, but the challenge is colossal.

I'm Natasha Dalturo, and this is the take.

The Amazon is the biggest forest on our planet, and in some ways the most important.

Without it, global temperatures would rise even faster than they are now, and the Amazonian region would get up to 4.5 degrees hotter, at Celsius, making it practically uninhabitable. My name is Constance

Mallory. I'm a freelance journalist covering Brazil, and I'm speaking to you from Rio de Janeiro.

Great. We're so happy to have you here with us.

So let's dive right into it. During former president Jaira Bolsonaro's far-right administration,

deforestation surged to a 12-year high. Now, fast forward to today, a year and a half into President Luis and

Asiolula de Silva's administration, how have things evolved on the ground in the Amazon?

I think first of all, I want to stress that you can't really overstate how bad things were

under Bolsonaro. And that's because, as President Bolsonaro created an environment of impunity in the Amazon,

which emboldened the illegal loggers, the illegal gold miners and illegal land grabbers

to cut down the forest and knowing that they would probably not face any consequences for that.

So he just sort of generally created this anti-environmental, political and institutional context.

From the sky, large swats of Brazil's Amazon are increasingly destroyed by fires and logging.

And it's getting worse. It's the highest level in 12 years.

So it's in this situation that Lula returns to power, promising that he will zero illegal

deforestation by 2030, you know, promising to put the fight against climate change at the

center of his presidency.

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