As the world confronts overlapping crises of climate change, biodiversity loss and social inequality, we must recognize the Amazon as a battleground where these struggles converge. Allowing its continued destruction under a future Trump administration will not just be a moral failure, but an ecological catastrophe that will reverberate for generations.
In 2018, just before Jair Bolsonaro was elected president of Brazil, I wrote about the dire consequences of his presidency for the rainforest and its Indigenous peoples, which I called ‘environmental fascism’. As we approach the U.S. election and the potential re-election of Donald Trump, we must recognize that a similar threat is now haunting the United States, threatening to set a perilous global agenda. This alarming trend demands our urgent attention and action.
As the world watches the United States gear up for another presidential election, the potential re-election of Donald Trump raises questions not only about the future of American democracy but also about the fate of global environmental policies. The Amazon rainforest, often referred to as the lungs of the Earth, is high on the list of threatened regions.
Environmental protections at risk
During Trump’s first term as president, the United States rolled back numerous environmental protections, including key provisions of the Clean Water Act and the Endangered Species Act. More notably, Trump withdrew the United States from the Paris Climate Agreement, signalling a retreat from global climate leadership at a time when urgent action is needed. While these domestic policy shifts were devastating enough, Trump’s indifference to the environment had global ramifications — especially for regions like the Amazon.
As the world confronts overlapping crises of climate change, biodiversity loss and social inequality, we must recognize the Amazon as a battleground where these struggles converge. Allowing its continued destruction under a future Trump administration will not just be a moral failure, but an ecological catastrophe that will reverberate for generations.
The Amazon, home to vital biodiversity and Indigenous peoples — who, as recognized peoples, hold distinct rights under international law — faces mounting threats from deforestation, illegal mining and extractive industries. I emphasize the term ‘peoples’ here because it is essential to affirm that Indigenous peoples have rights equal to those of any other nation. These pressures intensified under the far-right Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro, whom Trump publicly praised. Bolsonaro’s Amazon policy, characterized by land grabs and resource extraction, neatly aligned with Trump’s dismissive attitude toward environmental governance. The potential re-election of Trump could re-energize this dangerous dynamic, encouraging further exploitation of the Amazon.
It is important to remember that Brazil’s current president, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, narrowly defeated Jair Bolsonaro in the 2022 election. Since taking office in January 2023, Lula has been working to rebuild IBAMA, Brazil’s environmental protection agency, and the National Foundation of Indigenous Peoples (FUNAI), both dismantled during Bolsonaro’s administration. The Indigenous peoples are pressuring Lula to demarcate more territories before the end of his term. They are also demanding that the Supreme Court suspend the law that contains the Marco Temporal thesis, which states that Indigenous peoples only have rights to the lands they occupied on October 5, 1988, the date the Brazilian Constitution was enacted.
This thesis had already been deemed unconstitutional by the Supreme Court, but a Congress dominated by conservatives and aligned with Trump’s agenda managed to incorporate it into the law regulating the demarcation of Indigenous lands. Lula vetoed the parts of the law that upheld the Marco Temporal, but the ruralist bloc was able to nullify the vetoes.
From republics to pluralistic democracies
The histories of Indigenous peoples in the Americas are inextricably linked to the legacy of colonialism and slavery. All modern nation-states in the region have been built upon lands that were conquered, often using enslaved labor. This historical backdrop presents a challenge to contemporary democratic processes and calls for a reevaluation of who is a citizen within these societies.
Over the last century, we have witnessed a transition in many American countries from republics (where voting rights were limited to certain categories of people) to more pluralistic democracies. This evolution raises critical questions about the inclusion of Indigenous peoples within this democratic framework. In contrast to the notion of a republic, which traditionally reserved rights for a select few, modern democracies aim for broader participation and representation.
The environment and its natural resources are at the heart of the discussion on the maintenance of democracy, because anti-democratic governments use the gold and timber illegally extracted from the Amazon to perpetuate their power.
The rise of populist leaders like Jair Bolsonaro in Brazil and Donald Trump in the U.S. reflects a backlash against pluralistic values. These leaders often advocate for a return to an older, more exclusive model of the republic, where citizenship was narrowly defined, typically excluding marginalized groups such as Indigenous peoples. Today’s fight to ‘uphold the sky,’ as David Kopenawa puts it, is in the hands of Indigenous peoples striving to keep the forest standing. Hugo Loss, an analyst with Brazil’s elite environmental enforcement agency and a target of a sprawling spying campaign by former President Jair Bolsonaro’s administration, told me a few weeks ago, ‘The environment and its natural resources are at the heart of the discussion on the maintenance of democracy, because anti-democratic governments use the gold and timber illegally extracted from the Amazon to perpetuate their power.’
This dynamic plays out against the backdrop of a broader hemispheric narrative of nation-building on lands acquired through conquest. As Eduardo Galeano explores in The Century of the Wind, the historical struggles of various groups, including Indigenous and African Americans, reflect a common theme: the fight for recognition and rights in societies that have long marginalized them.
Pluralistic democracy necessitates that Indigenous peoples retain their distinct identities while also being considered integral members of the nation. Yet this ideal has often been met with resistance, as political and social systems grapple with the implications of inclusion. The historical narratives of the Americas reveal that the construction of national identities often rests on the erasure or assimilation of Indigenous communities.
Contemporary challenges echo the past, as seen in proposals like the Heritage Foundation’s 2025 plan, which threatens to open Indigenous lands to exploitation as never before. This situation underscores the importance of recognizing Indigenous sovereignty and their right to control their territories and assert collective landownership, as enshrined in international law, such as the International Labour Organization’s Convention 169, and in the national laws of some countries. The ongoing debates surrounding these issues reflect a larger crisis of identity in the Americas: how to build inclusive nations amidst a history of violence and exclusion? More precisely, when we talk about Indigenous territories, whether in the United States or Brazil, how much control do Indigenous peoples truly have over these lands?
As the Americas confront their colonial past and its implications for the future, the path forward must prioritize the voices and rights of Indigenous peoples. A truly democratic society cannot exist without acknowledging the historical and ongoing injustices faced by these communities. In this context, a singular question remains: how can nations in the Americas cultivate an inclusive democracy that honors the diversity of their populations while grappling with the legacies of colonialism and exclusion?
The Amazon is not only an environmental treasure; it is a vast repository of ecological and biocultural knowledge, carefully stewarded by Indigenous peoples over millennia. Donald Trump’s track record on Indigenous rights is deeply concerning. His administration gutted protections for Native American lands and opened them to oil and gas drilling. Should this ethos extend to his foreign policy, we can expect further marginalization of Indigenous voices in Brazil and other Amazonian nations.
A direct threat to the future of the Amazon
The fate of the Amazon is inseparable from the fight against capitalism’s destructive grip on natural resources. Trump’s brand of populist, extractivist capitalism focused on short-term economic gains at the expense of long-term sustainability, poses a direct threat to the future of the Amazon. In light of the potential for Trump’s re-election, I have no doubt that this destructive development model, rooted in a highly exploitative economic framework, will gain significant strength. This will have incalculable consequences not only for the climate but also for human health. There are two reasons why this destructive policy will gain momentum.
First, Trump empowers all actors in the Amazon who practice a criminal model based on pillage and illegal exploitation. His rhetoric, centred on individual desires – ‘I want it, I can take it, and therefore I will’ – encourages actions that disregard environmental, social, and legal consequences. This discourse prioritizes individualism over the collective interests of the community, which is precisely what those exploiting the Amazon wish to hear from their political representatives and from powerful foreign leaders like the U.S. President. Trump’s narrative thus strengthens domestic proponents of extractive policies within Brazil.
Second, Trump’s political framework is steeped in lies and climate denialism, which further legitimizes misguided development agendas for the Amazon. There has never been a true advancement of preservationist policies in the region; instead, we have seen consistent regression – sometimes rapid and aggressive, other times moving at a slower pace, but always backward. Increased destructive policies targeting the Amazon will primarily affect Indigenous populations and their territories, which are often seen as obstacles to be overcome; much like forests to be cleared and exploited. In some areas of the Amazon, only Indigenous territories are successfully holding back deforestation, fires, and other environmental threats.
Indigenous peoples and their territories represent the last frontier of resistance against the kind of policies Trump embodies. His election would fuel the destructive fire consuming any consideration of society as a whole, prioritizing a harmful individualism detrimental to the environment and the planet.
The stakes in the 2024 election extend far beyond the borders of the United States, reaching deep into the heart of the Amazon, where the future of the rainforest, and, by extension, the planet, hangs in the balance. A Trump presidency would likely signal a retreat from global environmental responsibility. It is critical that voters thus understand the far-reaching implications of this election. The survival of the Amazon depends, in part, on the decisions made in voting booths thousands of miles away.
Marcos Colón is the Southwest Borderlands Professor of Indigenous Communities at the Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication at Arizona State University. He is the author of The Amazon in Times of War, (Practical Action Publishing and Latin America Bureau, 2024).