Brazil: What it takes to ensure a rainforest’s survival

“There is no way to imagine the planet without the Amazon,” Silva said
in a speech to the 3rd World Forum on Theology and Liberation, which
met in Belem, northeastern Brazil, near the mouth of the Amazon River,
from 21 to 25 January. The WSF said it scheduled its 2009 meeting in
Belem to focus on the need to maintain the biodiversity of the Amazon
region. Sharing a platform on 24 January with Leonardo Boff, a
Brazilian liberation theologian now campaigning on the environmental
threat, Silva described the maintenance of the Amazon forests as
essential for the sustainability of the earth.

“We are facing an
unprecedented crisis. It’s not only environmental, it’s not only
economic, it’s a crisis for civilisation,” said Silva, a member of the
Brazilian Senate for the Para region of which Belem is the capital.
“It’s not only a matter of losing resources. We didn’t use to have the
hurricanes we now have in the south of Brazil.” Born in 1958, Silva
was one of the initiators in the 1980s of peaceful demonstrations by
forest-dwelling rubber tappers against deforestation and the expulsion
of forest communities from their traditional holdings in the Amazon
region. In 1994 Silva was the first rubber tapper elected to Brazil’s
federal senate, and the country’s youngest senator. In 2003, she was
made environment minister by newly-elected President Luiz Inacio Lula
da Silva, and set about reducing deforestation in the Amazon region.

She resigned from her post in May 2008 amid reports of disagreements
within the government about her environmental policies. In her speech
to the theology forum, Silva defended her record as environment
minister, and said she had resigned to ensure that the programme she
stood for would continue. She said that after she stepped down, public
pressure forced President Lula to say publicly his country’s
environmental policies would not be changed. The Amazon region, Silva
said, is home to 24 million inhabitants, a large number of them
indigenous peoples, and traditionally had systems of belief dedicated
to protecting the environment.
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