Marina Silva steps down as Brazil’s environment minister to run for Congress

SAO PAULO (AP) — Brazil's Environment Minister Marina Silva, a globally recognized climate leader, said she was stepping down Wednesday from her role in President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva’s administration to run for Congress later this year.

Under Brazilian election law, ministers must leave office six months ahead the Oct. 4 national election. Silva will be succeeded by João Paulo Ribeiro Capobianco, an environmentalist who has been serving as executive secretary at the Ministry of the Environment and Climate Change.

“I fulfilled the tasks assigned to me, which involved rebuilding and moving forward Brazil’s environmental policy following years of decline,” she said in an Instagram post.

Silva, who was first elected to Congress in 1994 and again in 2022, added that she was resuming her mandate as a lawmaker and would work for Lula’s reelection.

It was the second time Silva served as the head of environmental policy under Lula. And, for the second time, she delivered a sharp drop in deforestation.

When she took office in 2023, deforestation had nearly doubled under former President Jair Bolsonaro, who ran the country from 2019 to 2022. Silva pledged to eliminate deforestation by 2030, and since 2022, policies implemented under her leadership have reduced forest loss by more than 50%.

“If nothing exceptionally negative happens, we should have, if not the lowest, one of the lowest deforestation rates in the Amazon’s recorded history,” said Marcio Astrini, executive director of Climate Observatory, a network of environmental nonprofit groups.

“There was also strong control of deforestation in the Cerrado, and a serious and ongoing policy to combat forest fires, which became very severe in 2023 and 2024 due to extreme drought,” Astrini added.

Bolsonaro, who is serving a 27-year sentence for attempting a coup, championed agribusiness interests that oppose the creation of protected areas such as Indigenous territories and push to legalize land grabbing.

His administration froze the creation of new protected areas, weakened environmental agencies and shifted forest management to the agriculture ministry. Under Bolsonaro, deforestation in Brazil’s Amazon reached a 15-year high in the year ending in July 2021, though the pace of destruction slowed slightly in the following 12 months.

Silva reorganized the operations of the Environment Ministry and federal environmental protection agencies, Astrini said. She also restructured the Amazon Fund, which received new contributions, including record levels of funding to support field inspections, allowing enforcement operations to resume.

“The environmental sector started working again in Brazil,” Astrini said. “That was the first major achievement: She put the house in order.”

Marina Silva was crucial for bringing the U.N. climate conference to Brazil in 2025 and has enormous authority on Brazil’s climate agenda, Astrini said, but her presence was not enough to stop legislation and policies that are seen as setbacks by environmentalists.

Last year, Brazilian lawmakers passed legislation to fast-track approval of strategic infrastructure projects. Licensing processes that previously took six or seven years and required three separate permits will now be completed within 12 months. President Lula also pressed for the start of exploratory offshore oil drilling at the mouth of the Amazon River, a highly sensitive region.

Silva was born in the Amazon and worked as a rubber tapper as a teenager. As environment minister during Lula’s first two terms, from 2003 to 2008, she oversaw the creation of dozens of conservation areas and helped implement a sophisticated anti-deforestation strategy, including major operations against environmental crimes and expanded satellite monitoring. She also helped design the Amazon Fund, the world’s largest international initiative to preserve the rainforest.

Silva resigned in 2008 after clashing with Lula as he moved to court farmers during his second term. The two later reconciled, and Silva backed Lula’s successful 2022 bid against Bolsonaro.

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FILE - Marina Silva, right, presidential candidate for the Green Party, greets supporters during a campaign rally in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, Oct. 2, 2010. (AP Photo/Natacha Pisarenko, File)

FILE - Marina Silva, presidential candidate of the Brazilian Socialist Party, arrives to an interview with The Associated Press in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, Sept. 17, 2014. (AP Photo/Silvia Izquierdo, File)

FILE - Brazil's President Luiz Inacio lula da Silva talks to Environment Minister Marina Silva, left, at a ceremony in Brasilia, Brazil on March 15, 2004. (AP Photo/Eraldo Peres, File)

FILE - Environment Ministry Executive Secretary Joao Paulo Ribeiro Capobianco presents Amazon and Cerrado deforestation data at the ministry headquarters in Brasilia, Brazil, Aug. 7, 2024. (AP Photo/Eraldo Peres, File)

FILE - Marina Silva, Brazil environment minister, speaks during a news conference at the COP29 U.N. Climate Summit, Nov. 23, 2024, in Baku, Azerbaijan. (AP Photo/Rafiq Maqbool, File)

FILE - Brazil President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, center, attends a news conference with his wife Rosangela da Silva, left, and Marina Silva, Brazil environment minister, at the COP30 U.N. Climate Summit, Nov. 19, 2025, in Belem, Brazil. (AP Photo/Andre Penner, File)

FILE - Brazil's Environment Minister Marina Silva smiles during a decree-signing ceremony on Environment Day at the Planalto Palace in Brasilia, Brazil, June 3, 2025. (AP Photo/Eraldo Peres, File)

BAGHDAD (AP) — An American journalist who was kidnapped in Baghdad had tried to cross from Syria into Iraq three weeks earlier and was initially turned back, an Iraqi official said Wednesday.

U.S. and Iraqi officials said Shelly Renee Kittleson had also been warned of threats against her in the days before her abduction. A freelance journalist who has worked for years in Iraq and Syria and was described by those who knew her as deeply knowledgeable about the region and the communities she covered, Kittleson was kidnapped from a street in the Iraqi capital Tuesday and remains missing.

Hussein Alawi, an adviser to Prime Minister Mohammed Shia al-Sudani, said Kittleson had sought to enter via the al-Qaim crossing from Syria on March 9 but was turned back because she did not have a press work permit and because security concerns due to “the escalation of the war and aerial projectiles over Iraqi airspace as a result of the war on Iran.”

She later entered the country after obtaining a single-entry visa to Iraq valid for 60 days issued to allow foreign citizens stranded in neighboring countries to “transit through Iraq to reach their home countries via available transport routes,” he said.

Kittleson entered Baghdad a few days before she was kidnapped and was staying in a hotel in the capital, he said.

“The incident is being followed closely by Iraqi security and intelligence agencies under the supervision of” al-Sudani, Alawi said. He noted that one suspect believed to be involved in the kidnapping plot has been arrested and is being interrogated.

Iraqi security forces gave chase to her captors and arrested one suspect after the car he was driving crashed, but other kidnappers were able to escape with the journalist in a second car.

An Iraqi intelligence official who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to comment, said Iraqi authorities believe she is being held in Baghdad and are trying to locate her and secure her release. He said authorities “have information about the abducting party” but declined to give more details.

U.S. officials have alleged that Kittleson was taken by Kataib Hezbollah, an Iran-linked Iraqi militia that has been implicated in previous kidnappings of foreigners. The group has not claimed the kidnapping and the Iraqi government has not publicly said anything about the kidnappers' affiliation.

The Iraqi intelligence official said that prior to Kittleson's abduction, Iraqis had contacted U.S. officials to notify them that there was a specific kidnapping threat against her by Iran-affiliated militias.

Dylan Johnson, U.S. assistant secretary of state for public affairs, said on X Tuesday that the “State Department previously fulfilled our duty to warn this individual of threats against them.”

A U.S. official, who also spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to comment publicly, said, “She was contacted multiple times with warnings of the threats against her," including as late as the night before the kidnapping.

Kittleson’s mother, 72-year-old Barb Kittleson, who spoke to The Associated Press at her home in Mount Horeb, Wisconsin, said she heard about the kidnapping from a news report on Tuesday and was visited by the FBI at her house on Tuesday night.

When asked how she felt about the kidnapping she said, “Terrible. Scared. I’ll pray for her.”

Barb Kittleson said she last exchanged emails with her daughter on Monday. Shelly Kittleson sent photos of herself from Iraq, her mother said.

“Journalism is what she wanted to do so bad,” Barb Kittleson said. “I wanted her to come home and not do it, but she said, ‘I’m helping people.’”

Surveillance footage from Baghdad that was obtained by the AP shows what seems to be the moment the journalist was kidnapped. It shows two men approaching a person standing on a street corner and ushering the person into the back of a car. There appears to be a brief struggle to shut the car door before the men get into the vehicle and it drives away.

Iran-backed militias in Iraq have launched regular attacks on U.S. facilities in the country since the beginning of the U.S.-Israeli war on Iran.

Bauer reported from Mount Horeb, Wisconsin. Associated Press writer Matthew Lee in Washington contributed to this report.

The street corner in central Baghdad's Saadoun Street where U.S. journalist Shelly Kittleson was kidnapped in central Baghdad, Iraq, Wednesday, April 1 2026. (AP Photo/ Hadi Mizban)

U.S. journalist Shelly Kittleson poses for a cellphone photo in a cafe in Baghdad, Iraq, Monday, March 30, 2026. (AP Photo)

U.S. journalist Shelly Kittleson poses for a cellphone photo in a cafe in Baghdad, Iraq, March 25, 2025. (AP Photo)

A street view shows the street corner in central Baghdad's Saadoun Street where U.S. journalist Shelly Kittleson was kidnapped in central Baghdad, Iraq, Wednesday, April 1 2026. (AP Photo/ Hadi Mizban)

A street view shows the street corner in central Baghdad's Saadoun Street where U.S. journalist Shelly Kittleson was kidnapped in central Baghdad, Iraq, Wednesday, April 1 2026. (AP Photo/ Hadi Mizban)