🦁 In the lions’ den

ENVIRONMENTAL POLICY

Senate disrespect reflects broader problem for Marina Silva

It was meant to be a technocratic discussion about marine conservation. Instead, it devolved into a spectacle of hostility, gendered insult and political abandonment. 

Environment Minister Marina Silva abruptly walked out of a Tuesday Senate hearing after being targeted by offensive remarks from lawmakers, highlighting both the growing hostility to Brazil’s environmental agenda in Congress and the tenuous support Silva holds within the government.

The confrontation began when Senator Plínio Valério of Amazonas, a longtime critic of Silva, greeted her by declaring: “I’m talking to the minister, not the woman. The woman deserves respect; the minister does not.” Valério, who once joked about wanting to “strangle” Silva during a hearing, refused to apologize when challenged. Silva, visibly shaken, left the session.

The comment capped an hour of escalating tension in the Senate’s Infrastructure Committee, where Silva had been invited to explain the creation of marine conservation units in the so-called Equatorial Margin — an area off Brazil’s northern and northeastern coast that Petrobras hopes to explore for oil. The units, which environmentalists argue have been under discussion since 2005, do not overlap with oil blocks, but critics see them as a regulatory barrier.

Multiple senators took turns berating her, belittling both her record as environment minister and her legacy as a pioneering environmentalist. At one point, the committee’s presiding senator told Silva she brings upon herself remarks such as the infamous threat to strangle her, urged her to “know her place” and repeatedly cut off her microphone mid-sentence.

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