Brazil has historically been a relevant actor in the global governance of climate change. In the late 2000s, under President Lula, the country also seemed to become a global leader, showing signs of climate commitment at various levels of analysis, with declining emissions and national, sub-national, civil society and market actors committed to mitigation. Ten years after that euphoria, the contrast could not be greater. The federal government is led by one of the few global climate change denial leaders, Jair Bolsonaro, who has crowned a process of conservative retrenchment at all levels that began in 2011. This article analyses the trajectory of Brazil’s climate commitment between 2009 and 2020, from a multilevel governance perspective and using the climate commitment approach as an analytical framework.
