Brazil struggles to position itself in changing world

Significance Brazil’s G20 presidency this year will be followed by its chairmanship of the expanded BRICS group in 2025, when it will also host the UN climate conference. However, Brasilia is struggling to recover the influence it enjoyed during President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva’s 2003-10 tenure, when it was widely perceived as a rising global power and the unchallenged regional leader. Impacts Progress in tackling deforestation will help Brazil show leadership at COP30 next year, but ambitious concrete outcomes are unlikely. Brazil will increasingly struggle to be a “bridge” between the ‘West’ and the ‘Global South’. Brasilia will prove unable to exert significant leadership in South America in the foreseeable future.