BRAZIL:THE COMMITMENT of Brazil's government to protecting the Amazon rainforest was called into question on Tuesday when a prominent green activist resigned as environment minister.
Marina Silva quit following several defeats in her battle to place environmental sustainability at the heart of the government's drive for economic growth.
She has long been seen as outgunned in the administrative turf battles with the so-called "developmentalist" ministers who dominate government and who chafe at the restrictions environmental concerns place on infrastructure and other projects designed to speed up economic growth.
In her resignation letter to President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, Ms Silva cited "the difficulties I have faced for some time in driving forward the federal environmental agenda" and said the president was "witness to the rising resistance faced by our team from important sectors within government and in society." Mr Lula was said to be deeply irritated with the manner of Ms Silva's exit, which Greenpeace labelled "the chronicle of a death foretold".
The resignation is believed to have been prompted by Mr Lula's decision to place management of the government's flagship Sustainable Amazon Plan in the hands of a "developmentalist" minister who advocates projects such as diverting water from the Amazon to Brazil's drought-stricken northeast, an anathema to environmentalists. Ms Silva had been central to drawing up the Sustainable Amazon Plan and right up until its launch believed she would oversee its implementation.
A hero for many in the environmental movement, Ms Silva is a self-educated former rubber tapper from the Amazonian state of Acre. She rose to prominence as a defender of the rainforest's traditional dwellers against the encroachment of ranchers and loggers who are behind the massive deforestation of recent decades.
She scored some considerable successes during her 5½ years in office, in particular a major overhaul of Brazil's environmental agencies, many of which had long been among the most corrupt and ineffective in government.
The renewed vigour of these in recent years led ranchers in the Amazon to denounce Ms Silva as a radical fundamentally opposed to their presence in the region.
But many grudgingly accepted that her determination to enforce existing environmental laws signalled an end to the free-for-all that had existed in the Amazon for decades, when official connivance allowed ranchers and loggers to flout the law in occupying and clearing rainforest.
But there was also a series of defeats. Early in her term Ms Silva lost her fight to maintain Brazil's ban on genetically modified organisms - a long-standing policy of Mr Lula's Workers' Party which it abandoned once in power after lobbying by the agribusiness lobby.
Her ministry was stripped of important powers when it was deemed by the president to be holding up the issuing of environmental licenses for hydroelectric dams in the Amazon, projects seen as fundamental to providing the power to fuel Brazil's economic expansion, but decried by environmentalists as disastrous for the regions affected.
Ms Silva will now return to her previous role as a federal senator.