Alarming news from Brazil this week: Marina Silva, the woman considered to be the guardian angel of the Amazon forest, walked out of the Lula government as she became tired of fighting a losing battle in a government that has sold its soul to ‘economic development’, which in this case I would call economic genocide.
According to the British newspaper Independent, in a letter to president Lula, Ms. Silva said that her efforts to protect the rain forest acknowledged as the “lungs of the planet” were being thwarted by powerful business lobbies. The worldwide boom in agricultural commodities has created an unparalleled thirst for land and energy in Brazil, and the result has been a potentially catastrophic land grab into the world’s largest remaining rain forest.
The Amazon basin is home to one in 10 of the world’s mammals and 15 per cent of its land-based plant species. It holds more than half of the world’s fresh water and its vast forests act as the largest carbon sink on the planet, providing a vital check on the greenhouse effect. If it goes, there won’t be much hope left.
The Brazilian director of Greenpeace blamed the ministry’s resignation on the government’s Amazon policy and pressure to ease environmental regulations on factories. “Although Lula has adopted the environmental talk, the practice is development at whatever cost,” he said. Next week, the Amazonian city of Alta Mira will host the largest ever gathering of indigenous leaders in a bid to stop a massive hydroelectric dam being built on the Xingu river, a tributary of the Amazon. Although the government claims no decision has been made on the Bel Monte project it’s believed to have already committed itself to the construction despite experts warning of potentially dire environmental consequences.
In the face of such dire news, environmentally aware people outside Brazil have an obligation to boycott beef coming from the country and consider eating less meat, or no meat at all, to offset their carbon footprint. We have written here that U.S. farm subsidies in America are also another causal factor to high soy prices, hence the production rush in Brazil.
