Monday, September 14, 2026
News and Views from the Global South
ENVIRONMENT-BRAZIL: A Year of Great Progress, But at a High Cost
Mario Osava
- A nun’s murder, an environmentalist’s self-immolation and a bishop’s hunger strike shook Brazil in 2005, but also prompted unprecedented environmental achievements.
Dorothy Stang, a 73-year-old U.S. missionary who had lived in Brazil for 40 years, was murdered on Feb. 12 by gunmen presumed to have been sent by a group of landowners in Anapu, a violent, poor township in the northern state of Pará.
Her killing brought to a stop her tireless defence of the poor, and was also aimed at ending a local sustainable development project that had upset large landholding interests.
The international repercussions of the murder, however, provoked a reaction from the leftwing government of Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva which brought about the greatest environmental triumph of the year: a reduction in the rate of deforestation of the Amazon region.
A total of 18,900 square kilometres were deforested in the country’s Amazon jungle region between August 2004 and July 2005, 30.5 percent less than the 27,200 square kilometres deforested in the previous 12 months.
Just days after Stang’s death, the government took a number of measures to curb deforestation, especially in Pará. It created large new conservation areas, prohibited activities harmful to the environment along a highway that crosses the Amazon jungle, and intensified monitoring with the aid of the army.
It also launched “Operation Curupira” against deforestation, resulting in the arrest of more than 100 people since June, including several environmental officials. Thanks to this operation, a network for forging lumber extraction and transport licences was also dismantled in the western state of Mato Grosso, thus drastically curtailing deforestation in that state, the most heavily affected in the country.
However, destruction of the Amazon rainforest is still continuing at a high rate, and some environmentalists fear that this year’s achievements may not be maintained, as they were largely triggered by Stang’s murder.
Public opinion was also shaken on Nov. 12 when an environmentalist in Campo Grande, the capital of the southwestern state of Mato Grosso do Sul, burned himself to death in defence of the Pantanal wetlands, in the centre of the country.
Francisco Anselmo de Barros, 65, doused himself with gasoline and set himself alight at a protest rally in which dozens of people sought to prevent sugar plantations and processing plants being established so close to the Pantanal that they would affect the fragile wetland ecosystem.
“As we cannot vote to save the Pantanal, I will give my life to save it,” de Barros wrote in letters he left for his family, friends and fellow activists, referring to a vote in favour of the sugar mill project in the Mato Grosso do Sul state legislature, which was annulled after his suicide.
Another environmental crusade received a boost thanks to the repercussions of an 11-day hunger strike undertaken by Roman Catholic Bishop Luiz Cappio from Sept. 26 to Oct. 6.
The bishop of Barra, a poor township on the banks of the river Sao Francisco, declared he would fast to the death if necessary, in order to protect the river ecosystem. The Sao Francisco river is also known as the “river of national unity” because it joins the centre of the country with the northeastern coast.
The bishop is opposed to a two billion dollar project to divert part of the river’s flow. He called off his protest after President Lula promised to stop the engineering works and re-open public debate to clarify and ease the misgivings raised by the plan.
The Sao Francisco river project and genetically modified foods were the main targets of environmental organisations this year. Activists are demanding greater participation in the government’s decisions.
Civil society representatives who attended the public hearings and committees at which the Sao Francisco project was debated carefully laid out all their arguments and concerns, but the government did not listen to them, Cándido Grzybowski, the director of the independent Brazilian Institute for Economic and Social Analysis, told IPS.
The project is intended to divert the river to the semi-arid northeast, in order to implement poverty alleviation plans. But non-governmental organisations believe it is inappropriate, and advocate small projects, such as an ongoing initiative that helps local people build cisterns to store rainwater.
As for transgenic crops, environmentalists suffered a defeat in March, when Congress approved the Biosafety Law, which opened the gates to research, development, and supervised production of genetically modified foods.
Now activists are denouncing imbalances in the composition of the National Technical Commission on Biosafety, which regulates research and commercial planting of transgenic crops.
The Commission, 24 out of 27 of whose members have already been appointed, is to commence deliberations in February on nearly 500 cases pending.
The drafting of the law was coordinated by a former lawyer for the U.S. Monsanto corporation, the company which has the strongest interest in freeing up the use of transgenic seeds.
In addition, most of the 12 scientists on the Commission are linked to the development of this new technology, according to Gabriel Fernandes of the non-governmental organisation Advice and Services for Projects in Alternative Agriculture.
Environment Minister Marina Silva, who opposes transgenic crop development without prior studies on their impact, acknowledged that her position was defeated, but emphasised that she would respect the sovereign decision of Congress.
Silva says that her primary task is to incorporate the environmental dimension into government decisions overall.
On topics like transgenic crops and Amazon deforestation, Silva managed to persuade several ministries to take government decisions jointly. It is important that they be “government decisions,” and not simply measures adopted by a single ministry, she stated.
Print
|
