While global leaders, with the exception of Jair Bolsonaro, gather in Scotland for the 26th Climate Conference of United Nations Organizations, COP26, fisherman Roberto Cordeiro and his wife, Josiane, await the birth of their sixth child, in a riverside community in the Amazon. The child must be born at home, since Roberto and Josiane live many hours, by boat, from the nearest urban center, the city of Oriximiná. This doesn’t seem to worry them: their other five children were born exactly this way.
We are located on a small tributary of the Trombetas River, north of Pará, in the Quilombo Paraná do Abuà – one of the ten titled quilombola territories in that region, which concentrates 80% by area of ​​all titled quilombos in Brazil. Everything around it is green, an eternal green, as the Trombetas River is inside the largest block of protected rainforest in the world. This block of forest has a name: Calha Norte — nomenclature in disuse because it recalls a terrible project to install a hydroelectric plant in the region.
With 22 million hectares — almost the size of the state of São Paulo —, Calha Norte comprises nine municipalities, which, in turn, are home to ten titled quilombola territories, six indigenous lands, four federal and seven state conservation units (including the Grão-Pará Ecological Station, the largest protected area in tropical forest in the world, with 4.2 million hectares). In other words: a paradise, or a gigantic “factory” of biodiversity and carbon capture, which has only remained so, conserved, due to a virtuous cycle that includes the work of indigenous people and quilombolas —the true guardians of the forest— and, of course, due to the political will of governments and civil society groups who understood that there was immense potential there.
In a forest of such immense dimensions, with such famous rivers — the Negro, the Solimões, the Tapajós, the Xingu and, of course, the Amazon —, the Trombetas river may even seem “smaller”. Ledo enticed, since nothing in the Amazon is small. Trombetas is born on the border between Brazil and Suriname and runs for 700 kilometers before flowing into the Amazon. During the period of slavery, the river ended up becoming an escape route for enslaved blacks, who fled cocoa plantations in the municipalities of Óbidos, Alenquer and Santarém. At Trombetas, this population found a natural barrier—waterfalls, which made navigation quite complicated, making it impossible for the captors to advance. There they formed several hidden quilombos, deep in the forest. After the abolition, they also formed communities on the banks of the river, including Paraná do AbuÃ.
Roberto and his family live in a region rich in biodiversity, but they remain poor. Technology was able to bring all kinds of information to the corners of the forest; from consumer goods to behavioral habits. But this same technology has not yet managed to bring the forest into the hearts of those who live in urban centers. We talked about the Amazon, we know the importance of the Amazon, but the truth is that we still don’t know the Amazon. For most Brazilians, the Amazon is seen almost as a foreign country. It exists in our heads, because of its importance in the climate debate, but it has not yet entered our hearts. Brazil was once seen as the country of samba, or football. The time has come for us to be seen as the country of the Amazon.
I see power when I look at the Amazon: power in the forest, in animals, in seeds, in the water that the trees transpire — and that ends up traveling across the sky to irrigate plantations in the Midwest and Southeast with rain. I see power in infinite biodiversity and, of course, in its people. Roberto, the fisherman, is absolutely aware of belonging to that beautiful place and of the role he plays as guardian of our most valuable collective asset. But the truth is that income from fishing, manioc flour and the production of sap-based soaps is not enough to guarantee a new motor for your tail, a new television, or a refrigerator—goods your family craves . Worse still: their income does not guarantee minimum health conditions for the small shoot that is about to arrive.
As I have noted in previous articles, I do not intend to leave the public debate. Therefore, I continue in search of knowledge to build bridges between the population and academia, to contribute to the debate, believing that we will soon wake up from the institutional and political nightmare that we are living. I believe that common sense and the capacity for dialogue can still lead us to be the greatest green power in the world, leader in decarbonization, and in food production — without this having to result in the destruction of our biodiversity.
But how to get to that point?
First, looking with a genuine, affectionate and generous interest to the Amazon. Looking at the forest and at the Brazilians who live in the forest. Because the various development and conservation projects will be useless if we do not place the 25 million Brazilians who inhabit the Amazon as protagonists.
The Amazon has identity power. It can define the country’s identity, a Brazil that is culturally diverse and gigantic by nature, with a new social organization: that of the first developed forest society on the planet.
The Amazon also has economic power. There is an annual global market of 176 billion dollars for forest products, according to a survey by the Amazon Institute of Man and Environment, Imazon, which will be cited by representatives of the Inter-American Bank at COP26. And do you know what is Brazil’s share in this market now? Less than 0.2%. In other words: there is a gigantic potential for the exploitation of products such as camu-camu, a species of acerola typical of the Amazon, or cocoa, a plant domesticated by the indigenous people of the Amazon and which moves R$ 10 billion a year around the world. We just need to know how to embrace this opportunity.
There is also a third layer of forest profitability, this one still in a more hypothetical field, but already under research: that of products not yet identified — molecules and enzymes that can generate medicines, creams, surgical materials, construction materials, whatever we can imagine. The Amazon could be the stage for our revolution. A triple revolution, driven by the knowledge of the forest, by new forms of production compatible with a green economy, and by new forms of management and governance that the curatorship of a public good requires.
The house where Roberto and Josiane live is a classic portrait of the riverside houses that spread along the banks of the thousands of rivers that wind through the Amazon hydrographic basin. The floor is made of noble, resistant wood, taken from the forest and raised about 1 meter from the ground, to avoid water during the flood season. The walls are made of these same boards, positioned vertically, side by side. Inside the house, fabrics serve as doors, dividing the three small rooms: a kitchen —which is limited to a garden with pots—, an unfurnished room —except for the closet that features the old television—, and a bedroom with just a mattress and two hanging hammocks, where the couple and their five children sleep, without comfort or privacy. There is no refrigerator. The food — basically fish and manioc flour — is prepared in a wood-fired oven outside. Even living in the largest hydrographic basin on the planet, water is a problem not only for Roberto and Josiane’s family, but for most of the riverside populations. It is collected directly from the river, without treatment, which causes many health problems, especially for children.
The couple and their family live in one of the most preserved places in the Amazon, at a time when climate discussions dominate the world’s agenda. Over the past 200 years, the Earth’s temperature has increased by 1.1°C. In the Paris Agreement, signed in December 2015, 195 countries pledged to contribute to limiting the temperature increase to 1.5ºC by the end of the century.
However, many scientists believe the increase could reach 3°C — a prediction that was stamped on the cover of “The Economist” recently. There is an even more catastrophic scenario, 5°C warmer, which would cause a 25 meter rise in sea level. A UN report published last week listed cities like Recife, Rio de Janeiro and Santos as the most threatened by climate change in Brazil. The tragedy caused by the Covid-19 pandemic will be small if we reach an irreversible climate scenario. Then we will be facing the mother of all pandemics, for which we will not have vaccines capable of mitigating the effects. And this picture doesn’t just live in a hypothetical future. He lives here now—see the burnings in the Pantanal or the clouds of smoke in the interior of São Paulo. We are already the first generation affected by global warming.
To avoid an even greater catastrophe, the planet needs the forest, especially the tropical one. Carbon is mainly emitted from fossil fuels and biomass. And the function of the forest is precisely to store carbon and capture it from the atmosphere, in addition to serving as a kind of “carburetor” for the world, cooling it. In other words, when cut down, the forest releases the carbon contained in it and still no longer absorbs it from the air.
I have been dialoguing with various sectors of society, forming a diverse group in knowledge and experiences, and with a common interest: thinking about a project for a country. A project that contemplates the architecture, engineering and way of execution of our public machine. Until today, Brazil has not had a project for a country. Only power projects. And the Amazon, with the environmental power it represents, has to be a fundamental part of an ambitious and viable project.
The Amazon can elevate Brazil to a status we never had, making it the first global environmental power — a power directly linked to the future of the planet, but also to the present, due to the great economic and strategic opportunities of a Nature-based economy . This will give us relevance in the world. I have no doubt that the forest, or experiences drawn from interaction with the forest, will help us to develop the means to resolve other social ills.
The Amazon is not just natural and cultural wealth; it is also economic wealth for Brazil. Countries and companies are engaging in low-carbon goals. If we make a well-planned plan that is generous and inclusive, with long-term ambitions, I’m sure the world will again look at us with admiration. We will no longer “flaunt” the precarious isolation, the crude pride of standing as an outcast, as seen at the G20 meeting. And the Amazon will then be able to awaken an economic interest never seen before, generating quality of life and income, so that Roberto and Josiane buy the dreamed of refrigerator, or the sterndrive engine, and so that their children and future grandchildren are born with medical support, and have more financial conditions —and therefore more chances— of those who know how to attend a university. Thus, Brazil will grow in a powerful and sustainable way, and we will finally be the country of the future we deserve to be. I believe.
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