With the first U.N. climate talks in the Amazon set for November, Brazil is fast-tracking a series of controversial decisions that undercut its green rhetoric, revealing mounting political pressure on the federal environmental agency and widening divisions within President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva’s cabinet.

A total of 116 cities in the northeastern Brazilian state of Bahia were in a state of emergency from flooding as of Tuesday due to heavy rains that have been pounding the region since the end of November.