The lawless forest: the future of the Amazon is still to be guaranteed
The lawless forest: the future of the Amazon is still to be guaranteed
The Amazon is not doomed to become extinct and sink the planet, but a 10,000 km journey through the region imposes a conclusion: the challenges to saving the most central biome on Earth are daunting.
The lawless forest: the future of the Amazon is still to be guaranteed
Linguist Nilson Gabas Júnior, director of the Goeldi Museum in Belém do Pará, looks at the crises in contemporary Amazonia and sees an elephant in a dark room surrounded by people listening to him. In this metaphorical Amazon, “everything is known, from the nail or the ear” of the elephant, but after the diagnosis, the therapy of “a transversal political decision” or “a great planning vision” is missing. The “nails” could be the deforestation that continues to devastate the rainforest; the “ears” the illegal occupation of land or illegal “mining”; and the elephant's teeth are the illegal invasions of indigenous territories that threaten their way of life or, as happened this year with the Yanomami, their very existence. There are partial answers for each of these problems, but in the darkness of the room, the Amazon, Brazil and the world continue to be unable to reverse the trends that threaten a biome essential for life on the planet.
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