The lady in this picture is Marina Silva, until recently the head of Brazil’s environmental agency. The BBC and NPR reported last week that she had resigned from her post in protest of the government’s environmental policies. She has been the head of the agency since the government of Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva (“Lula”) took office in 2003 and has been a staunch defender of the Amazon rainforest. Many people involved in environmental protection are saying that her resignation is a major setback for the rainforest in Brazil and that the country is losing the only voice in the government that spoke out for the environment.Marina Silva grew up in a wood-plank house built on stilts (like the ones we stay in) without electricity, phones or health care in the Amazonian state of Acre. She never attended school and helped her father, a rubber tapper.In the mid-1970’s, the government land agency divided the land and gave small plots to rubber tappers, forcing her family to become subsistence farmers. As a girl she suffered from malaria (at least 5 times), hepatitis, and mercury poisoning. She was sent to the city of Rio Branco for treatment at age 14 and eventually moved into a convent, where she learned to read, write, and was influenced by the sense of social justice of the nuns. She became involved with organizing sit-ins on unclaimed land and articulating an agenda to “Save the Amazon”- providing security both for the forest and for the people who lived there and engaged in nondestructive economic activities. She won election to the state legislature in 1990 on a platform of advocating sustainable development, then the federal Senate in 1994. She was a national heroine and when she became Minister of the Environment after Lula won election, she was a symbol that anyone could achieve anything in Brazil.
However, it quickly became obvious that President Lula was more concerned with economic development than conservation or environmental protection, and Silva was often frustrated by more powerful ministries and didn’t get funding to enforce existing laws, much less implement new policies. In recent years she has been overruled in her opposition to genetically modified grains, the construction of a new nuclear power plant as well as several government infrastructure projects in the Amazon rainforest, including two big hydroelectric dams on the River Madeira, and a major new road. She was also believed to be dismayed at the recent appointment of another minister to act as a coordinator for the government's newly announced strategy for the Amazon. In January, the Brazilian government announced a huge rise in the rate of Amazon deforestation. Satellite imaging revealed that in the last five months of 2007, 3,235 sq km (1,250 sq miles) were lost., because rising commodity prices are encouraging farmers to clear more land to plant crops such as soya. Marina Silva has blamed the increasing deforestation across the Brazilian Amazon on cattle ranchers and farmers.
Meanwhile, a founder of Brazil's Green Party, Carlos Minc, has been named as the country's new environment minister from the state of Rio de Janeiro (not in the Amazon). However, senior officials in the government say they are determined to stick with the “Sustainable” Amazon Plan - based on large-scale development of roads, waterways and dams (the quotes are mine). The resignation of Mariana Silva is a very bad sign for environmental advocacy within Brazil and the development path it appears to be taking.
The area shown in squares below represents the 4.1 million square kilometers of the Brazilian Amazon and shows how much has been cleared or is at risk. Each square measures 2,500 square kilometers.
- Light brown is land cleared by deforestation 1970-2007
- Dark brown is land likely to be lost by deforestation and drought by 2030 (WWF 2007)
- Green is untouched forest
- (the black box shows the size of California)
Information Sources:
“The Last Forest” by Mark London and Brian Kelly (2007)
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/7399715.stm
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/7402254.stm
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/7206165.stm
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/7360258.stm
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