Brazil Balances Agricultural and Environmental Priorities
In a new paper, Richard Sanders, a Global Fellow in the Wilson Center’s Canada Institute and a former senior US diplomat, writes about Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva’s challenges balancing opportunities and demands in the agricultural sector with his administration’s ambitious environmental commitments. For Brazil, a strong farm sector is economically vital, but in trying to assure environmentally sustainable practices, Lula is confronting an influential agro-industrial lobby and an unsupportive Congress. Among the consequences is the stalled EU-Mercosur trade talks, at an impasse due in part to European concerns over agricultural expansion and deforestation in Brazil. This deadlock, Sanders writes, “could delay an agreement for another two decades.” Finding a balance between the agricultural sector’s demands and Lula’s environmental commitments and Indigenous rights will not be easy, he writes.
About the Author
Richard Sanders
Former member of the Senior Foreign Service of the U.S. Department of State
Latin America Program
The Wilson Center’s prestigious Latin America Program provides non-partisan expertise to a broad community of decision makers in the United States and Latin America on critical policy issues facing the Hemisphere. The Program provides insightful and actionable research for policymakers, private sector leaders, journalists, and public intellectuals in the United States and Latin America. To bridge the gap between scholarship and policy action, it fosters new inquiry, sponsors high-level public and private meetings among multiple stakeholders, and explores policy options to improve outcomes for citizens throughout the Americas. Drawing on the Wilson Center’s strength as the nation’s key non-partisan policy forum, the Program serves as a trusted source of analysis and a vital point of contact between the worlds of scholarship and action. Read more
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The Global Europe Program addresses vital issues affecting the European continent, US-European relations, and Europe’s ties with the rest of the world. We investigate European approaches to critical global issues: digital transformation, climate, migration, global governance. We also examine Europe’s relations with Russia and Eurasia, China and the Indo-Pacific, the Middle East and Africa. Our program activities cover a wide range of topics, from the role of NATO, the European Union and the OSCE to European energy security, trade disputes, challenges to democracy, and counter-terrorism. The Global Europe Program’s staff, scholars-in-residence, and Global Fellows participate in seminars, policy study groups, and international conferences to provide analytical recommendations to policy makers and the media. Read more
Brazil Institute
The Brazil Institute—the only country-specific policy institution focused on Brazil in Washington—works to foster understanding of Brazil’s complex reality and to support more consequential relations between Brazilian and U.S. institutions in all sectors. Read more
