Читать книгу The Future of Amazonia in Brazil - Marcílio de Freitas - Страница 15

Amazonia is strategic to Brazil and mankind. It raises a number of important issues to the world, with emphasis on the following: its participation in the construction of a new aesthetic concept for mankind, its sustainable development as the world’s largest open living library, as a strategic space belonging to Brazil and the world, as a means to renew the planet, as the planet’s thermostat, and as the planet’s climate stability mechanism. These meanings of Amazonia’s material and symbolic representations need to be understood by mankind so that we value nature and life at all times.

The possibility of the planet’s ecological instability reaffirms Amazonia’s worldwide importance. At this time, climate change is its main “driving force.” Amazonia’s cultural and environmental complexity qualifies and problematizes its inclusion in the world’s political and economic processes. Nature and culture, territories and peoples, economy and technological innovations, environmental services, and sustainable development are categories that drive the cycles of its physical and political existence. Its exploitation by predatory capitalist forces and its laboratory-like condition for great international scientific experiments have ←1 | 2→generated contradictions and controversies that create new world political tensions and diplomatic agendas. The emergence of sustainability has added new elements to this framework.

The invention of new industrial matrices, and the integration of communication networks with new forms of financial market organization and the technical occupations are indications of globalization processes. New world geopolitics and links between education, science, religion, and the financial market have radically changed our relationship with nature and society. The incorporation of sustainability within this framework and in people’s fictional imaginary has enhanced the creation of new tendencies and forms of social organization.

These broad issues direct the globalization of sustainability towards the economic, religious, and scientific foundations of the civilizing process, generating a new political and ethical centrality. This centrality promotes and appoints local enterprises, based on an ethical system installed on the structural revaluation performed on the basis of notions of value and rights. Value and the right to life; the intrinsic value of nature and environmental services; culture, nature, and symbolic value; individual rights and environmental preservation; collective rights; and international relations, among others, constitute controversial themes that underpin projects, research programs, public policies, and international agreements. Giving new meaning to the foundations, explanatory meanings, and operative mechanisms for the notion of value also requires reviewing approaches and evaluations of human beliefs and desires. In this context, three classic categories, truth-value, utility-value, and beauty-value (Latour and Lépinay, 2008) have been replaced by life-value, mankind-value, culture-value, and universe-value, more complex categories and with a greater heuristic range (Freitas et al., 2017). This new conformation of mankind enhances the sustainability ethic and Amazonia.

The globalization of hypocrisy and the political barbarity have fortified the ethic’s importance, considering sustainability as a universal paradigm. Its incorporation as a civilizing foundation demands changes in the relationships between man and nature, between nations, between consumers and the market, and between technical training institutions and national state organizations. Developed countries are redefining their productive and occupational matrices, assuming the paradigm of sustainability and its links with public policies and ecological issues. For this reason, national states are seeking to integrate science and technology with the market in an ethical perspective that values social promotion. This to require structural changes in teacher training in all fields of knowledge.

The sustainability ethic embraces different themes and programs designed for the production and construction of human life and of public policies, generating contradictions and ruptures between ecocentric and anthropocentric ←2 | 3→conceptions. This historical framework has weakened the public consensus based on sustainability’s regulatory guides and standardizations. It is now necessary to institute principles and criteria that guide the organization of methodologies and priorities for individual and collective classifications (Routley, 2007), from a perspective that considers culture to be imbricated in nature, and that it reaffirms the basic relations of this sustainability’s new ethic. An ethics guided by the brief period it has been associated with human needs and, simultaneously, by the extended period it has been articulated to the permanence of mankind and the planet (Meunier and Freitas, 2005). The fusion of mankind’s history to the history of matter enhances this ethical dimension according to which man does not behave as nature’s owner thus proposing to modify, internally, the predominant morals.

This new framework from the twenty-first century enhances social promotion and the protection of nature. National states and societies exert key roles in the proposed technical and judicial regulations, as well as in its political legitimatization. These changes are producing a new understanding of the concepts of economic development and citizenship. From the standpoint of social solidarity, its main causes are the structural changes in education, science, and technology. Ecology, climate change, and sustainable development gain prominence in this new world scenario.

Brazil as the primary environmental power in the twenty-first century and Amazonia as the primary world reference for sustainable development are central to this process, which raises new challenges in science education because of the planet’s environmental degradation. Today, there is a worldwide focus on new technologies related to the following themes: clean development mechanisms; environmental policies associated with climate change; management processes dealing with environmental education and culture; scientific and technological mechanisms applied to the biogeochemical cycles and environmental services; institutional strategies and methodologies applied to the preservation of landscapes; processes of land use, climate, and integrated management of ecosystems; and methodologies to use and integrate meteorological networks and water resources. Sustainable development is a key element in this process, as it proposes new forms of organization and relations between societies, national states, and man and nature. Five new commitments from the twenty-first century are required to improve societies and mankind: a worldwide political contract; democracy as a universal political system; a new worldwide contract on nature; a new social contract; and a new contract on ethics.

A new contract on nature has been discussed by presidents of national states in various international forums. The planet’s social and ecological stability is the ←3 | 4→central focus of this contract, which also has Amazonia as its primary reference (Freitas and Silva Freitas, 2013). This new contract on nature, with sustainability as its paradigm, has highlighted contradictions in the capitalist regimen.

The central question can be put as follows: How to accomplish economic development concurrently with social inclusion and the protection of nature? Economic systems are integrating research on novel industrial matrices and sustainability through networks and technological platforms. The models of development based on a polluting industrial matrix and on the use of fossil fuels contribute massively toward fast worldwide ecological degradation and exploitation. These models are in the process of extinction. They are being redimensioned and adapted to sustainability’s new requirements. However, these changes are implemented at a slower rate than the impacts of climate change. Amazonia is a key element in this process. The construction of a market that values the preservation of natural environments also constitutes a new dimension of world economic processes.

But, Amazonia is also not exempt from the deleterious effects of climate change. The atmospheric modeling legitimized by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC, 2007) predicts that the planet’s warming process also presents the feasible possibility of savanization of Amazonian biomes, directly impacting the eight countries that make up Pan-American Amazonia, and more than 250 endogenous cultures. This thermodynamic scenario impacts the region’s biogeochemical cycles, endangering the survival of the largest tropical rainforest on the planet. Global climate change models need to be improved. Again, Amazonia is a key element in this process.

The world’s environmental crisis, caused by predatory development, has resulted in a worldwide synergy for the preservation of natural resources, including soils, waters, and the earth’s atmosphere. It has also contributed to the creation of new educational matrices committed to mankind’s future and the struggle against social inequality. Even so, the financial market’s pragmatic interests continue to prevail through intensive privatization and generating unlimited profit, and political alienation.

Uncontrolled population growth, environmental issues, religious fundamentalism, political extremism, massive immigrations, and growing social and economic inequality are problems with a direct impact on new development models and the quality of life.

World population is growing rapidly: one billion in 1830, two billion in 1930, three billion in 1960, four billion in 1975, five billion in 1990, six billion in 2000, seven billion in 2010, eight billion by 2025, and more than 9.5 billion by 2050. This shows mankind’s demographic evolution in the last two centuries. Further, by 2050, 800 million people will be living under nutritionally deficient conditions ←4 | 5→(Collomb, 2000), unless public policies change radically. The construction of a world food security policy centered on sustainability is a political challenge.

The paradigm of sustainable development gives historical prominence to Amazonia. If present trends continue, there will be insufficient natural resources for the world population’s basic needs in 2070. A new contract on nature is therefore necessary. A set of commitments institutionalized by governments and incorporated into national and international public policies could ensure the technical instruments required to guarantee the planet’s socioecological stability. The central axis of this contract (Freitas and Silva Freitas, 2014) is the preservation of the human species, an issue articulated by science education, ecology, and Amazonia via the processes of climate change. There is national and international consensus regarding Amazonia’s importance to Brazil and to the world.

Amazonia is in South America. It is characterized by high temperatures, humidity, and heavy rainfall. It covers parts of Brazil, Peru, Ecuador, Bolivia, Colombia, Venezuela, Suriname, Guyana, and French Guiana and occupies approximately 6.5 million km2 of which 4.5–5 million km2 are forests. This region supports the contiguous area of the greatest social diversity and biodiversity in the world and is home to one-third of the rain forests of the world and one-fifth of the earth’s surface fresh water. Amazonia also plays an important role in the mechanics, thermodynamics, and chemistry stabilities of the world’s atmospheric processes. Brazilian Amazonia is formed by the states of Amazonas, Acre, Pará, Amapá, Roraima, Rondônia, Tocantins, Maranhão, and Mato Grosso. These nine Brazilian states are home to a population of approximately 30 million, which corresponds to 0.35% of the world’s population. There are 163 different indigenous peoples, for a total population of 342,000 or 47% of the Brazilian indigenous population. About 22,000 isolated communities live within its forests.

Brazilian Amazonia covers a total of 4,987,247 km2, 58% of the total area of Brazil and 40% of South America (5% of the earth’s surface) (Silva, 2013). Approximately, 3.5–4 million km2 is forest without significant anthropogenic disturbance. Brazilian Amazonia has approximately 75,000 km of navigable rivers, a fleet of 350,000 boats, and 11,280 km of borders with seven neighboring countries. In addition, there are 12 million hectares of wetlands and 150 million hectares of protected forests in federal and state conservation units (data from 2011). It plays an important role in the planet’s climate and thermodynamic stabilities. Brazil is ranked first in the world in terms of diversity of plants, fish, fresh water, and mammals; second for amphibians; and third for reptiles. It possesses 55,000 different vegetable species (22% of all plant species) and 524 different species of mammals, 517 of amphibians, 1,622 of birds, 486 of reptiles, 3,000 of fish, 10–15 million insects, and millions of microorganisms. The majority of Brazil’s patrimony is ←5 | 6→located in Amazonia, further emphasizing the importance of its insertion in world economic processes (Cruvinel, 2000). Scientific literature also confirms that scientists are aware of less than 10% of all existing biodiversity on earth. It has been stated that 40% of current medications in modern medicine were developed from natural sources; for example, 25% from plants, 12% from microorganisms, and 3% from animals. Furthermore, a third of the most prescribed medications worldwide comes from these sources. If anticancer drugs and antibiotics are considered separately, this percentile increases to approximately 70% (Calixto, 2000), which reaffirms the geopolitical and economic importance of Amazonia.

There have been a number of phytogenetic accomplishments in Ducke Forest Reserve, a preservation area (100 km2) located close to Amazonas State capital Manaus. Researchers from Brazil’s National Institute for Research in Amazonia (INPA), in Manaus, verified the existence of 5,000 individual trees and 1,200 tree species in this Reserve (Ribeiro et al., 1999). This is equal to the total number of species in Europe, reaffirming the great biological diversity of that area, where new species are still being discovered.

Through a refined prospecting, Hans ter Steegel et al. (2016) made a study using 530,025 collections between 1707 and 2015, identifying 11,676 tree species in Amazonia, distributed in 1,225 genera and 140 families. These studies are strategic to the development of a bioeconomy that is in urgent need of new taxonomic and floristic studies in a region with an estimated 16,000 tree species. Certainly, this great living library has answers to many of mankind’s problems.

According to Kinver (2017), there are 60,065 species of trees in the world. Therefore, Amazonia is home to 19% of the world’s tree species. It is home to the world’s largest genetic bank on solid land or the largest botanical garden on the planet. Its connections with economic processes need to be better measured because of its importance for mankind’s future.

In the words of Barata (2012): “the Amazonian forest has registered 2,000 medicinal species used by the local population as medicines, in addition to 1,250 aromatic species producing essential oils. However, only three aromatic species are part of Amazonia’s export and trade agenda: cumaru beans, copaíba and rosewood essential oil.” In short, this is a complex natural laboratory open to biotechnological innovations.

Research also indicates that Amazonian forests have 350 tons of biomass per hectare and produce annually 7.5 tons of vegetable litter (branches and leaves) per hectare, one of the largest world sources of renewable biomass on a solid surface. According to Antony (1997), in the forest on the Anavilhanas Archipelago, in Central Amazonia, which is subject to periodic flooding, a population of microbes with 116,409 individuals per m2 was found in a superficial layer 10 cm deep. ←6 | 7→Recent studies also reveal the existence of approximately 300 species of trees with a diameter of more than 10 cm per hectare in Brazilian Amazonian forests, exceeding the total number of species in Europe. The productive chains associated with bioindustry and with the chemistry of natural products need to be developed in the region.

About 20% of the Amazonian rainforest has been destroyed since 1970. The large economic projects installed in the region and biomass burning are the main actors in these predatory processes. Large gas and particle emissions from burning have a strong impact on its biomes and the composition of its atmosphere. Change in the cloud formation process, modification of cycles of various chemical elements such as ozone, important to the forest’s stability, and the impact on the interaction between the electromagnetic radiation, light, and the forest affecting the entire photosynthetic chain are perverse effects of biomass burning in this region (Artaxo et al., 2005). Several ongoing research programs seek to understand and measure the range and the regional and planetary impacts of these processes, particularly on the greenhouse effect and climate change.

These features of Amazonia present challenges to forest engineering, to basic sciences, and particularly to biology, physics, chemistry, meteorology, and to engineering of new materials making possible new forms of management, and the production of new methodologies and sustainable products in the tropical rainforest basin.

The Brazilian government’s political inability to propose forms of public-private partnership to exploit Amazonia’s natural wealth, maintaining the forest preserved in a sustainable way, has sacrificed several generations of Brazilians. Financing Amazonia’s economic and social development requires high investments, about US$1 trillion during ten consecutive years, in strategic Amazonian projects. The origin and application of these financial resources constitute a political action that needs to be executed, with public support, in the face of possible opposition from the hegemonic political interests of Brazil’s south and southeast regions, mainly.

The Amazonian rainforest basin presents itself as a “water world.” Its social and economic processes, its history and myths, geography, productive arrangements, and culture are driven by the cycles of nature permeated by the cycles of water and energy. Animal and plant life in Amazonia is inseparable from the cycles of nature. The meteorological sciences, agroecology, naval engineering, tropical medicine, anthropology, sociology of science, pharmacology, tropical technologies with emphasis on fish farming, information and communication technology, food technologies, ecological mining, design, and ecotourism, among others, are areas of science and technology essential to its sustainable development. Through research, ←7 | 8→innovation, and development programs; the integration and sustainable socioeconomic use of the Pan-Amazonian water basin is urgently needed. This is another Amazonian challenge.

The Amazonian region is crossed by the Amazonas River, which drains more than 7 million km2 of land and has an average annual outflow of approximately 176,000 m3/sec (176 million L/s). This makes it the world’s largest river by volume of water, approximately four times the volume of the Congo River in Africa (second largest) and ten times the volume of the Mississippi River. In the dry season, the flows of Amazonas River into the sea at about 100,000 m3/sec and at more than 300,000 m3/sec in the flooding season (Sioli, 1991). The Amazonas River is also the longest and widest on the planet. It is about 6,992 km long and 8–10 km wide in the periods of low water and up to 50 km wide, in flat regions, in the flooding season. It can be up to 100 meters deep.

Based on the RADAM (Radar Project of Amazonia) inventory and other reference sources, Junk (1993) estimated that 20–25% of Amazonia’s territory is periodically flooded. The high rainfall and the relief of the region favor this phenomenon, which covers about 1 million km2 of its biomes. Junk’s studies (1989) show that it is possible to measure the impacts of this phenomenon on the structures and processes that control the distribution of plants and animals, the primary and secondary production, and the nutrient cycles, among other important factors for the stability of these wetland forests.

The term “wetland forests” is used by Junk to refer to all types of forest subject to irregular, seasonal, or long-term flooding. Since Pre-Columbian times, this vast region has been inhabited by thousands of riverside residents who practice family farming and have livestock, causing only minor environmental impacts, and extract from nature only the products needed for their survival and trade with local organizations. Nowadays, this picture is in the process of major change due to the heavy pressure exerted by large logging companies, farmers, cattle ranchers, and large-scale fishing. These flooded forests play an important role in controlling primary production, carbon stock, and various biogeochemical cycles in the region, which is home to more than 1,000 species of trees (Junk and Piedade, 2010). Clearly, they, too, have connections with the control of climate change exerted by Amazonia. Its conservation and sustainable management and development is a challenge for Brazil.

Recent geological evidence also indicates the existence of an underground river about 6,900 km long, under the Amazonas River, at a depth of 4,000 meters. This underground river has a flow of 3 million liters (3,000 m3/s). The two water courses flow in the same direction-from west to east-but possess different physical behaviors (Pimentel, 2013). Several international geological studies seek to understand the characteristics of this complex river basin.

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The Amazonian basin has low demographic density and one of highest rainfall indices on the planet, with an average of 2,200 mm per year (1 mm of rainfall corresponds to 1 liter of water per square meter). This represents an annual total volume of water of 12 × 1012 m3 (12 quadrillion liters), resulting in the world’s largest rainforest (Salati et al., 1983). The region has more than 1,000 rivers forming the hydrological network necessary for its ecological and social integration.

Evapotranspiration is an important phenomenon for the thermodynamic stability of plants. Through this process, the leaves of each tree in Amazonia release about 300 to 1,000 liters of water per day into the atmosphere. This immense amount of steam rises to the atmosphere’s upper layers forming the so-called flying rivers, which have a strong impact on regional and continental atmospheric processes. Researchers (Pinedo-Vasquez et al., 2013; Nobre, 2014) state that “In Amazonia, there are 5.5 million square kilometers occupied by native forests, with approximately 400 billion trees of the most varied sizes.” “We did the count, which was also independently verified, and emerged the incredible number of 20 billion tons (or 20 trillion liters) of water that are produced every day by the trees in the Amazonian basin.”

Therefore, there are the “flying rivers” in the Amazonian atmosphere, a complex hydrographical basin on its solid surface, and large hydrological reservoirs in its subsoil, not yet properly dimensioned. Understanding nature’s engineering operation here presents a great challenge for future generations. The connections between these natural water courses and the energy transport processes in Amazonia involve several worldwide ongoing interdisciplinary research programs.

The energy moves the splendor of animal and plant life in the Amazonian basin. The intensity of solar energy in this region is 400 calories per square centimeter per second. One calorie is the amount of heat required to raise the temperature of 1 gram of water by 1 degree Celsius. It is estimated that 80–90% of this energy is used in the forest evapotranspiration process and 10–20% for air heating (sensible heat). There are days in which the temperature increases by up to 30 degrees for heights 10 km above the ground. In the forest on dry land, the steam originates from transpiration (70%) and from rain’s evaporation intercepted by the forest canopy (30%). The Amazonia and Congo basins and the area around Borneo are typically tropical, important to earth’s ecological stability and efficient in the absorption of solar energy and its redistribution via atmosphere (Crutzen and Andrae, 1990). Recent studies project that the humidity conversion process (via rain) in Amazonia’s atmosphere liberates heat equivalent to approximately 400 million megawatts. This energy is essential to Amazonia’s maintenance and to the thermodynamic stability of global atmospheric processes. These surveys are ongoing.

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Amazonia’s energy and waters are the physical “fuels” of its biological and cultural diversity. Interventions in its environments by Amazonian traditional populations have increased its biological diversity over time. After the arrival of man in this region thousands of years ago, three factors have emerged and contributed to the multiplication of its heterogeneity. First, the hunting or selective fishing of large animals, birds, and fish; second, fire, which has resulted in the opening of small clearings; and the introduction of exotic species such as dogs, oxen, cultivated plants, and the domestication of native species (Brown Júnior and Freitas, 2002). The habits, relationships, and movements of its fauna and flora in its biomes as well as its physical interactions with external environments also amplified its biological diversity. Finally, the continuous renewal of its cycles of nature and the circulation of its peoples in its natural gardens also contributed to the construction of its rainforests and rivers. Therefore, the sustainable development of Amazonia is also a commitment and a civic debt of the national state to its original populations that have bequeathed us this fantastic physical and cultural heritage.

The break with important international scientific and technological collaborations associated with several Brazilian research programs towards better understanding of Amazonian ecosystems functioning and use is another of the Brazilian government’s mistakes. The destructive impact of this political action will affect several national institutions and generations of young Brazilians. Once again, political barbarism has triumphed over wisdom. Concentrated and long-term research, sophisticated studies, important social and economic projects applied to region, specialized technical training programs, and collaborations of a universal nature, among others, are in the process of extinction. A particular example is the destruction of the Amazon Fund Program, as presented in Chapter 7. Brazil still does not have enough science and technology for the full development of Amazonia in sustainable patterns. The integration and sustainable development of Pan-American Amazonia require alliances with traditional populations and international collaboration in knowledge from various fields.

The scientific and technological education of the 163 indigenous peoples from Brazilian Amazonia is another challenge. The organization of their academic curriculum requires the following innovations: reaffirmation of the education of indigenous teachers committed to science education integrated to the complexity of the region; an interdisciplinary pedagogical project emphasizing the indigenous teachers’ participation in teaching the subjects of this program; incorporation of themes touching on philosophy, the natural sciences, and the social sciences; inclusion of approaches and technical innovations that enable an interface of Western science and traditional knowledge; formation of networks promoting their scientific inclusion; formation of vocational technology platforms; and the access of the ←10 | 11→students to contemporary educational issues, strengthening their cultural formation and confrontation with predatory capitalism.

Teacher training programs for the indigenous peoples with a view to making Amazonia sustainable should be guided by the following thematic axes: mathematization and geometrization of nature’s processes; history and philosophy of science and indigenous education; research methodology in science education for indigenous teachers; psychopedagogical models applied to science education for indigenous teachers; instrumentalization for the training of indigenous teachers in science education; training of indigenous teachers in the models of sustainable development; indigenous education, communication, and contemporaneity; and engineering for the rainforest, health technicians, among other less important topics (Freitas and Pires, 2012). The Indigenous University of Amazonia is still a distant reality. This institution would generate many innovations in public policies and sustainable development of the region and the world. Its implementation is also a challenge to the region’s leaders.

How to develop Amazonia? This is a key issue both regionally and nationally. The sustainable development of Amazonia requires a set of operational initiatives among which we highlight: the building of a national political consensus; heavy investments in research, innovation, and development; increased support of the regional research and technology institutions; guide the basic science and tropical technological innovations to regional public policies; induce new tropical technologies; development of new differentiated industrial and fiscal policies; appropriate infrastructure and logistics; new regulatory framework for sustainable ecological and economic zoning; participant planning including all social and economic actors; and consolidation of national and international scientific partnerships. Sustainable development inserts new elements into Amazonia’s future.

In contrast, the federal government’s incentive of the possession and illegal use of indigenous lands by prospectors and loggers, and its threat to revise consolidated indigenous rights are another perverse legacy from the new president of Brazil. The growing expansion of agribusiness in Amazonia and the recent authorization by the Brazilian government of 51 different types of highly toxic pesticides also constitute threats to its indigenous peoples. Agribusiness continues to advance through Amazonia, creating poverty for its populations, deforesting and contaminating its biomes.

Without exception, all of the major projects that have been proposed for Amazonia are guided by predatory capitalist development. Proposals for a new territorial division and environmental cartography, economic de-structuring, exacerbated privatization, frequent illegal occupation of extensive territories, and unrestricted access to the large economic groups that use or collect nature’s resources ←11 | 12→on a large scale, among others, has generated a lot of tension and will contribute to the growth of poverty among their populations and the irreversible destruction of its ecosystems. Amazonia’s social poverty and environmental destruction are historical and political monuments to this type of capitalism, as shown in Chapter 6.

The use of organized and accumulated knowledge about Amazonia and the humid tropics enables its sustainable development without cutting down a single tree of its forests or polluting its rivers. This should be a development policy guideline for Amazonia. Partnership with their traditional peoples will accelerate the use of this strategic guideline for this region.

Sustainability makes an original contribution to this situation. Today, Brazilian society is acting as a political brake against the disastrous actions of Brazil’s new president to Amazonia. The international trade and economic pressure against the Brazilian government is also a key element in Amazonia’s protection.

Major world newspapers have published their critical opinions about Amazonia’s destruction. The Economist says that “The Amazon is perilously close to the tipping-point. Brazil has the power to save earth’s greatest rainforest-or destroy it.” This same magazine calls all presidents to take up a political position against Bolsonaro’s environmental program; he is considered the world’s worst enemy of the environment (The Economist, 2019). The New York Times also recorded the fast spread of deforestation in Amazonia since Brazil’s new president, Jair Bolsonaro, took over and his government reduced efforts to fight illegal logging, ranching, and mining (Casado and Londoño, 2019). In his article, Stéphen Rostain, Director of Research at CNRS, published in Le Monde magazine, criticizes the world’s passivity in the face of the burning in Amazonia. Rostain asks: “Is Amazonia burning? Yes, but apparently not enough to move powerful policymakers and funders, the archaeologist warns” (Le Monde, 2019a). On September 2019, “over 200 investors representing some U$16.2 trillion under management called on companies to do their part in halting the destruction of the world’s largest tropical rainforest” (Slattery, 2019). This issue needs to be immediately incorporated into the industrialized countries’ diplomatic agendas.

Protests against the destruction of Amazonia are rapidly multiplying worldwide. Some of the untimely actions of the Brazilian government harmful to Amazonia have been annulled by collegiate decisions of Brazilian Superior Courts. However, this has not prevented the destruction of many programs of protection and social promotion in Amazonia. In this sense, Amazonia’s political future is also very uncertain. This news is spreading rapidly worldwide.

It is important to remember that from 2003 to 2016, the Brazilian government of the Workers’ Party implemented important social programs in Amazonia. In this period, Programs such as “Light and Water for All,” “Family Allowance,” ←12 | 13→“Zero Hunger,” “My House – My Life,” and “More Doctors,” among others, have all enabled the social inclusion of more than 4 million people in the region (data 2016). Geographical characteristics, large distances, low population density, climate regimes, and heavy rainfall in the region have been obstacles to making these Programs more efficient. These social initiatives have been important to boost sustainable development in Amazonia’s isolated regions. Brazil’s new president has closed down most of the Programs. This new state of affairs raises the following question: How to build a social and economic sustainability network for the social promotion of the population 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 urgently convene specific Assemblies to discuss protective mechanisms for the region. Religion, institutions for world security, and culture need to be aligned in the defense of Amazonia. Mankind’s future is at stake.

The relationship between the globalization of environmental issues, Amazonia, and worldwide uncertainties will be analyzed in the next chapter.