Brazilian Environment Minister Marina Silva resigned Tuesday after six years in office, leading a Greenpeace campaigner to lament that “Brazil is losing the only voice in the government that spoke out for the environment.” Silva’s policies prioritized environmental protection, particularly for the Amazon; while her policies landed her a spot as one of Grist’s fave green politicians, they made her unpopular with developers, her government peers, and President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva. While the environment minister declined to give an official reason for her departure, Greenpeace’s Sergio Leitao postulates that “the pressure on her for taking the measures she took against deforestation has become unbearable.”
