In electing a new president Brazilians secure a “huge victory for the planet”

The recent presidential victory secured by Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, known as Lula, in Brazil has been hailed by many as a major win for the natural world.

Felipe Villela, the co-founder of renature, which supports farmers and corporates to scale regenerative agriculture, spoke at COP27 of his delight that Lula would replace Bolsonaro and help bring to an end the former rulers reckless destruction of the Amazon rainforest and environment.

“The change of politician in Brazil is a huge victory for the planet,” Felipe told Marc Buckley. “This shows we can drive zero deforestation agendas in Brazil, to stop illegal mining and illegal land grabbing for agriculture practices. With Lula we can have much less impact on nature and therefore have a much more resilient future ahead of us.”

Felipe is at COP27 with his renature hat on and says he is now very much #ACopHalfFull when it comes to the future. His mission at the COP is to take the “regenerative agriculture agenda to high level decision makers” in a bid to move capital to the smallholder farmers who need it, and said what fills him with hope is seeing regenerative agriculture now on the table at this COP27.

And his parting election slogan for us is a call to action for the world: “let’s make regenerative agriculture and food mainstream”.

Watch his interview with our editor-at-large Marc Buckley below.