Luiz Inácio “Lula” da Silva began his third term as Brazil’s president this Sunday after narrowly winning last October’s election by a margin of 1.8 percentage points over his predecessor Jair Bolsonaro, who traveled to the United States ahead of the inauguration ceremony war did not carry out the transfer of the presidential sash. The new president pledged to tackle poverty and make Brazil “a leader in the fight against climate change.”
Much has changed in Brazil since 2010. The population has increased from 196 million to about 214 million. In the four years of the Bolsonaro administration, the Amazon, a vital biosphere for cooling the planet and known as the “lungs of the world,” has shrunk significantly as the rate of deforestation accelerated by up to 60 percent under the Bolsonaro administration. To put the extent of this damage into context, Mongabay reports that between August 1, 2021 and July 31, 2022 alone, around 11,568 square kilometers of rainforest, equivalent to the size of Qatar, were destroyed.
At the same time, the national debt, which accounted for 51.7% of GDP in 2010, reached 80.27% in 2021. Inflation reached a high 12% in April 2022 before falling to around 6% in November. According to The Economist, the number of Brazilians who do not have enough to eat rose from 6 percent to 16 percent under Bolsonaro. In addition, the country has been hit hard by the COVID-19 pandemic.
The magnitude and pervasive nature of these issues is reflected in responses to Statista’s global consumer survey, which gave respondents multiple options to choose from, showing that between July 2021 and June 2022, 76% of Brazilian consumers reported unemployment a major problem in the country, while 69% named education and poverty. At the same time, nearly two-thirds of respondents cited inflation or the state of the economy as serious concerns, while crime, health and social security were also a concern for six out of ten Brazilians. About one in four named civil rights and climate change as one of the most important issues.
Despite these findings, a recent study by Ipsos found that the vast majority of Brazilians have a more positive outlook for 2023 than most other countries. In this Statista article, we discover how global optimism about the new year varies.