MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

“Sustainability party” is born in Brazil headed by tireless fighter for Amazon rainforest protection

Marina Silva was a presidential candidate in 2010 and won 20 million votes

Former Brazilian environment minister and presidential candidate Marina Silva has launched a new political party with an eye on next year’s presidential elections. The new party is called “Sustainability Network.” It was launched in Brasilia at a meeting of politicians, congressmen and other Silva supporters.

Marina said “it is not a party created just for the elections” and said it “calls for a new vision of the world, in which we will be participants and not just spectators.”

Silva, 55, did not say if she plans to run for the presidency in 2014. She won a surprising 20 million votes, or 19% of the total, in a first round of voting when she ran for president in 2010.

Silva's party will push for “a sustainable future and seek to break the monopoly of traditional political parties,” said Pedro Ivo Batista, who is helping set up the new organization.

“We want a new way of conducting politics, bring politics to the people, use the networks of civil society,” he added.

A figurehead of Brazil's environmental movement, Silva has been a tireless fighter for the protection of the Amazon rainforest.

A member of ex-president Lula da Silva's Worker's Party until 2009, Silva served in his cabinet as environment minister for five years from 2003. She later joined the Green Party.

Born into a family of rubber tappers in the northern state of Acre, she was a colleague of Chico Mendes, the environmental pioneer who was assassinated for defending the Amazon environment.