The Future of Amazonia in Brazil. Marcílio de Freitas
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and Amazonia’s environmental protection in a context of extreme political adversity?
Supporting the inclusion of Amazonia’s protection in international political forums, in new protocols, in contracts, and in global public policies will be an effective counterpoint to its ongoing destruction. These actions are necessary and urgent.
Contradictorily, Amazonia’s political and economic importance grows as its role in the ecological stability of the planet and mankind is reaffirmed and policies for its economic development are weakened. This situation favors new forms of colonialism in the region, recreated by scientific, political, and business leaders. New tensions are emerging between the Region, the Nation, and the World.
Sustainability and culture, sustainability and the sacred, sustainability and protected spaces, sustainability and nature and the city, sustainability and the economy, and sustainability and public policies are dimensions essential to development models in Amazonia.
Amazonia also plays a special role in the essential processes of ensuring the chemical stability of the earth’s atmosphere. Experts speculate it contributes, on a regional and international scale, to the levels of carbon dioxide (the main greenhouse gas), nitric oxide, and nitrogen dioxide, key agents responsible for the degree of atmosphere oxidation, and nitrous oxide gas, approximately 200 times more harmful than carbon dioxide (Keller et al., 1983).The degree of importance of the first two nitrogenized gases to the chemical stability of the atmosphere and of the other two to climate stability is a complex problem and still subject to scientific research. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change stated that in 2014, approximately 15.98 billion tons of carbon dioxide were emitted into the earth’s atmosphere. Amazonian ecosystems behave like a gigantic vacuum cleaner, absorbing, for photosynthetic effect, 250–500 million tons of this gas per year (Gash et al., 1996). Higuchi (2007) estimates, based on an average of 160 tons of carbon per hectare, that Amazonia’s ecosystems store 90 billion tons of carbon, 13% of the total carbon stored in earth’s atmosphere. Uncontrolled deforestation, therefore, has an immediate impact on the growth of the greenhouse effect.
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Amazonia is not the lung of the world. The oxygen it produces is counterbalanced by what it consumes. There is a small excess released that has no major impact on the total volume of oxygen present in the earth’s atmosphere.
The ATTO Program, Amazonia Tall Tower Observatory, was inaugurated in the State of Amazonas in August 2015. This program is the result of a scientific collaboration between the Max Planck Institute, Germany, the National Institute for Research in Amazonia, and the State University of Amazonas, among others. It possesses a Tower of 325 meters high, fully instrumentalized to measure the interaction between atmospheric processes and the Amazonian rainforest. These measures will enable an estimate of the degree of the Amazonia’s participation in the planet’s climate, chemical, and thermodynamic stabilities. In the long term, it is intended to measure the Amazonia’s participation in climate change, creating elements to plan the use and occupation of its ecosystems. The Tower is the planet’s largest free laboratory for atmospheric studies and will have a period of continuous use of 20 to 30 years. The development of this Research Program has been compromised due to the lack of interest of the federal government in continuing it. The impacts of its interruption have not yet been fully measured, but several scientific projects associated to this Program have already been paralyzed.
The environmental monitoring of Amazonia by Brazil’s National Institute of Space Research (INPE) confirms that the development policy of Brazil’s new president for this region has caused the fast growth of its deforestation. This deforestation increased 88% from 2018 to 2019 (INPE, 2019). This is a tragedy for Brazil and mankind. It is a political problem in need of an urgent solution. Brazilian society and the international community need to intensify political pressure on the Brazilian government to guarantee protection of Amazonia.
In August 2019, Brazil’s president fired the Director of INPE, due to the disclosure of the increasing rates of deforestation in Amazonia (Quierati, 2019). INPE has been monitoring deforestation in Amazonia since the 1980s. Yet, Jair Bolsonaro claims the Institute has inflated these deforestation rates, and that INPE has an ulterior motive in disclosing them. He also decided that from that time on this technical information would be of strategic interest to the Brazilian State. Nontransparent control of this information by the State, the technical disqualification of INPE, and the disrespect to its Director, Ricardo Galvão, an eminent Brazilian scientist, intensify the uncertainties about the protection of Amazonia. These actions are another political aberration of this government.
In December 2019, Professor Ricardo Galvão was chosen by Nature Research Journal as one of the ten people who mattered in Science in 2019, for his action in defense of Amazonia.
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The Amazonian region’s economic potential grows together with its importance in balancing the world’s ecological stability. Its economic production rose to US$70 billion in 2012, the result of more than 600 industrial enterprises, predominantly in electro-electronics, computer science and technology, motorcycles and bicycles, pharmaceutical products and cosmetics, and mining exporting to more than 80 countries. The economic values of the environmental services rendered to the world by the Amazonian ecosystems are estimated at about US$3 trillion per year.
New relations between science, religion, regional development, Amazonia, and sustainability present complex problems to mankind. Currently, Brazilian Amazonia is undergoing an economic and political cycle tending toward irreversible ecological destruction (Freitas and Silva Freitas, 2018a,b). Its physical and cultural heritage needs to be protected. Based on this assumption, it is necessary to disseminate its importance and to develop it in sustainable form.
The Brazilian government’s incompetence to implement a modern industrial policy contextualized to Amazonia’s cultural and ecological potential is an obstacle to its economic development. This question can be formulated as follows: How to implement a sustainable industrial policy in Amazonia exploring its natural resources?
Amazonia’s future has sustainable development seated in its multinaturalism and the technology as reference. Education, science, social and economic equity, religion, and world processes are key elements in this challenge. However, since January 2019 Amazonia has been devastated by more than 75 thousand fires, which represents 84% more than last year (Le Monde, 2019b). Its destruction must be stopped. As Stephen Walt (2019) puts it: “Who will Save the Amazon (and How)?”
The political positions of the presidents of Brazil, the United States of America, and China on the environmental protection of our planet are worrying. Their environmental policies put many uncertainties for mankind. The Catholic Church has always been very active in Amazonia since the arrival of the first Europeans in this region. Anticipating the national state’s disastrous political actions in the region, Pope Francis led the Organization of the Special Assembly of the Synod of Bishops to reflect on Amazonia’s main problems. In October 2019, in Rome, this religious institution defined its new guidelines and operational actions in this region of such importance to the world. From an ecumenical perspective, the globalization of Amazonia is another great challenge for institutions committed to building world peace and ensuring the planet’s environmental protection.
The UN and UNESCO, responsible for world security and defense of the physical and cultural heritage of the world’s populations, should also be able to ←15 | 16→foresee and prepare for the disastrous and frightening political scheme unfolding in Amazonia. These institutions should