Brazil’s success—so far—demonstrates how many elements have to come together to make such policies work. You need clear direction not just at the top but all the way through government. Ms Silva’s determination was crucial, but if her views had not had the support of Mr Jatene, Mr Avelino and Mr Demachki, she would not have got far. You need administrators with enough imagination to find novel solutions: the CAR was a way around an apparently insuperable land-tenure problem. You need a functioning police force: if the Ibama had not been effective, the politicians’ and prosecutor’s intentions would have been impossible to implement. You need businessmen whose conscience or share price induces them to change their supply chains. You need NGOs, such as Greenpeace and Imazon, to badger business and government to do things differently. You need independent media to pick the story up and run with it. And, crucially, you need a public that cares: if voters and consumers were indifferent, none of this would happen.