The Future of Amazonia in Brazil. Marcílio de Freitas
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and generating unlimited profit, and political alienation.
Uncontrolled population growth, environmental issues, religious fundamentalism, political extremism, massive immigrations, and growing social and economic inequality are problems with a direct impact on new development models and the quality of life.
World population is growing rapidly: one billion in 1830, two billion in 1930, three billion in 1960, four billion in 1975, five billion in 1990, six billion in 2000, seven billion in 2010, eight billion by 2025, and more than 9.5 billion by 2050. This shows mankind’s demographic evolution in the last two centuries. Further, by 2050, 800 million people will be living under nutritionally deficient conditions ←4 | 5→(Collomb, 2000), unless public policies change radically. The construction of a world food security policy centered on sustainability is a political challenge.
The paradigm of sustainable development gives historical prominence to Amazonia. If present trends continue, there will be insufficient natural resources for the world population’s basic needs in 2070. A new contract on nature is therefore necessary. A set of commitments institutionalized by governments and incorporated into national and international public policies could ensure the technical instruments required to guarantee the planet’s socioecological stability. The central axis of this contract (Freitas and Silva Freitas, 2014) is the preservation of the human species, an issue articulated by science education, ecology, and Amazonia via the processes of climate change. There is national and international consensus regarding Amazonia’s importance to Brazil and to the world.
Amazonia is in South America. It is characterized by high temperatures, humidity, and heavy rainfall. It covers parts of Brazil, Peru, Ecuador, Bolivia, Colombia, Venezuela, Suriname, Guyana, and French Guiana and occupies approximately 6.5 million km2 of which 4.5–5 million km2 are forests. This region supports the contiguous area of the greatest social diversity and biodiversity in the world and is home to one-third of the rain forests of the world and one-fifth of the earth’s surface fresh water. Amazonia also plays an important role in the mechanics, thermodynamics, and chemistry stabilities of the world’s atmospheric processes. Brazilian Amazonia is formed by the states of Amazonas, Acre, Pará, Amapá, Roraima, Rondônia, Tocantins, Maranhão, and Mato Grosso. These nine Brazilian states are home to a population of approximately 30 million, which corresponds to 0.35% of the world’s population. There are 163 different indigenous peoples, for a total population of 342,000 or 47% of the Brazilian indigenous population. About 22,000 isolated communities live within its forests.
Brazilian Amazonia covers a total of 4,987,247 km2, 58% of the total area of Brazil and 40% of South America (5% of the earth’s surface) (Silva, 2013). Approximately, 3.5–4 million km2 is forest without significant anthropogenic disturbance. Brazilian Amazonia has approximately 75,000 km of navigable rivers, a fleet of 350,000 boats, and 11,280 km of borders with seven neighboring countries. In addition, there are 12 million hectares of wetlands and 150 million hectares of protected forests in federal and state conservation units (data from 2011). It plays an important role in the planet’s climate and thermodynamic stabilities. Brazil is ranked first in the world in terms of diversity of plants, fish, fresh water, and mammals; second for amphibians; and third for reptiles. It possesses 55,000 different vegetable species (22% of all plant species) and 524 different species of mammals, 517 of amphibians, 1,622 of birds, 486 of reptiles, 3,000 of fish, 10–15 million insects, and millions of microorganisms. The majority of Brazil’s patrimony is ←5 | 6→located in Amazonia, further emphasizing the importance of its insertion in world economic processes (Cruvinel, 2000). Scientific literature also confirms that scientists are aware of less than 10% of all existing biodiversity on earth. It has been stated that 40% of current medications in modern medicine were developed from natural sources; for example, 25% from plants, 12% from microorganisms, and 3% from animals. Furthermore, a third of the most prescribed medications worldwide comes from these sources. If anticancer drugs and antibiotics are considered separately, this percentile increases to approximately 70% (Calixto, 2000), which reaffirms the geopolitical and economic importance of Amazonia.
There have been a number of phytogenetic accomplishments in Ducke Forest Reserve, a preservation area (100 km2) located close to Amazonas State capital Manaus. Researchers from Brazil’s National Institute for Research in Amazonia (INPA), in Manaus, verified the existence of 5,000 individual trees and 1,200 tree species in this Reserve (Ribeiro et al., 1999). This is equal to the total number of species in Europe, reaffirming the great biological diversity of that area, where new species are still being discovered.
Through a refined prospecting, Hans ter Steegel et al. (2016) made a study using 530,025 collections between 1707 and 2015, identifying 11,676 tree species in Amazonia, distributed in 1,225 genera and 140 families. These studies are strategic to the development of a bioeconomy that is in urgent need of new taxonomic and floristic studies in a region with an estimated 16,000 tree species. Certainly, this great living library has answers to many of mankind’s problems.
According to Kinver (2017), there are 60,065 species of trees in the world. Therefore, Amazonia is home to 19% of the world’s tree species. It is home to the world’s largest genetic bank on solid land or the largest botanical garden on the planet. Its connections with economic processes need to be better measured because of its importance for mankind’s future.
In the words of Barata (2012): “the Amazonian forest has registered 2,000 medicinal species used by the local population as medicines, in addition to 1,250 aromatic species producing essential oils. However, only three aromatic species are part of Amazonia’s export and trade agenda: cumaru beans, copaíba and rosewood essential oil.” In short, this is a complex natural laboratory open to biotechnological innovations.
Research also indicates that Amazonian forests have 350 tons of biomass per hectare and produce annually 7.5 tons of vegetable litter (branches and leaves) per hectare, one of the largest world sources of renewable biomass on a solid surface. According to Antony (1997), in the forest on the Anavilhanas Archipelago, in Central Amazonia, which is subject to periodic flooding, a population of microbes with 116,409 individuals per m2 was found in a superficial layer 10 cm deep. ←6 | 7→Recent studies also reveal the existence of approximately 300 species of trees with a diameter of more than 10 cm per hectare in Brazilian Amazonian forests, exceeding the total number of species in Europe. The productive chains associated with bioindustry and with the chemistry of natural products need to be developed in the region.
About 20% of the Amazonian rainforest has been destroyed since 1970. The large economic projects installed in the region and biomass burning are the main actors in these predatory processes. Large gas and particle emissions from burning have a strong impact on its biomes and the composition of its atmosphere. Change in the cloud formation process, modification of cycles of various chemical elements such as ozone, important to the forest’s stability, and the impact on the interaction between the electromagnetic radiation, light, and the forest affecting the entire photosynthetic chain are perverse effects of biomass burning in this region (Artaxo et al., 2005). Several ongoing research programs seek to understand and measure the range and the regional and planetary impacts of these processes, particularly on the greenhouse effect and climate change.
These features of Amazonia present challenges to forest engineering, to basic sciences, and particularly to biology, physics, chemistry, meteorology, and to engineering of new materials making possible new forms of management, and the production of new methodologies and sustainable products in the