Marina Silva

Marina Silva is a Brazilian politician and environmentalist who currently serves as Brazil’s Minister of the Environment and Climate Change. She is the founder and former spokeswoman for the Sustainability Network Party (REDE). During her political career, Silva served as a senator of the state of Acre between 1995 and 2011 and Minister of the Environment from 2003 to 2008. One of Silva’s main achievements as Environment Minister during that period was the establishment of the Plan to Prevent and Combat Deforestation in the Amazon (PPCDAm), which reduced deforestation rates by 80% from 2005 to 2012, in addition to supporting the creation of 25 million hectares of protected natural areas in the region. Marina Silva ran for president in 2010, 2014 and 2018. She has gained worldwide recognition for defending the environment, traditional communities, social justice, and sustainable development for over 30 years. Silva has won several awards in recognition of her environmental activism and leadership. In 1996, Silva won the Goldman Environmental Prize for South & Central America. In 2007, the United Nations Environment Program named her one of the Champions of the Earth and the 2009 Sophie Prize. In December 2014, Marina Silva was elected by the British Financial Times newspaper as one of its Women of the Year. Silva is also a member of Washington, D.C.-based think tank, the Inter-American Dialogue. In 2010, she was named by Foreign Policy magazine to its list of top global thinkers, for taking Green mainstream. In 2012, she was one of eight people chosen to carry the flag for the opening ceremonies of the 2012 London Summer Olympics. Marina Silva is a specialist in Psychopedagogy and Psychoanalytic Theory and holds Doctor Honoris Causa from the Federal University of Bahia and from the Chinese Academy of Forestry.