The environment has vanished from Brazil's 2026 presidential race, with the first round less than two weeks away, in a year of floods and cyclones in the South and Southeast and of extreme drought risk in the North. The finding comes from Folha de S.Paulo, which reviewed on Monday (21) the government programs of the six main candidates and concluded that only President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva of the Workers' Party offers proposals equal to the climate challenge.
Voters say they want the topic on the stump. An Ipsos poll commissioned by the Observatório do Clima, a coalition of Brazilian civil society groups, heard 1,800 people across all regions between August 17 and 20: 91% consider it important that candidates present climate proposals, and for 62% the issue is very important, according to a report by the environmental news site ((o))eco. For 87%, climate change is already causing droughts, heavy rains and heat waves, and 79% say the issue should come first even at economic cost.
A country under weather alerts
Brazilians vote on October 4, after months of extremes. Early on Monday (21), a storm dumped heavy rain, lightning, hail and gusts of 106 km/h on Porto Alegre, according to MetSul Meteorology, which kept warnings of destructive winds and possible tornadoes in Rio Grande do Sul and expected a cold front and a low-pressure area to bring rain and storms to 11 states. Folha also points to the risk of a new extreme drought in the North, and MetSul records Super El Niño conditions in the Pacific, with droughts worsening across South America. In the Northern Hemisphere, temperature records and floods such as those in Nepal and Tibet complete, according to the paper, the picture of a destabilized climate.
Vague programs and an unclaimed green vote
The gap repeats in the candidates' plans. According to Folha, the other five contenders, Flávio Bolsonaro (PL), Ronaldo Caiado (PSD), Romeu Zema (Novo), Augusto Cury (Avante) and Renan Santos (Missão), address the climate vaguely, with no details on central points such as cutting greenhouse gas emissions. The paper links the silence to the institutional crisis around the Supreme Federal Court, Brazil's top court, which dominates campaign coverage.
"The poll shows Brazilians want commitments from candidates on the climate agenda, but unfortunately that is not what is happening. Most presidential candidates have weak or nonexistent plans on the issue. One of the candidates is even a convinced denier," says Marcio Astrini, executive secretary of the Observatório do Clima.
Suely Araújo, public policy coordinator at the coalition, argues the concern must turn into votes: "In the middle of a climate crisis, we cannot accept deniers, declared or disguised, in either the Executive or the Legislature." Leila da Costa Ferreira, a professor of environmental sociology at the University of Campinas (Unicamp), told Folha that research has already shown extreme events influence how people vote. "Rain and extreme events are part of our daily lives, and this has to be on the lips of candidates for president of Brazil," she says.
Demand shows up beyond polling. In the Amazon, an InfoAmazonia analysis published on Friday (18) crossed electoral and demographic data and found that precincts with more evangelical and white voters tend to back candidates opposed to the climate agenda. In the Ipsos survey, climate change leads among environmental problems, with 35% of mentions, ahead of waste management (21%) and air pollution (15%), and 90% consider it very important that government work on environmental protection. What is missing, in Ferreira's reading, is a candidate who takes the issue into people's daily lives.