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
