By Colleen Coveney
Brazil’s former environment minister Marina Silva told a UC Santa Barbara virtual audience that her nation’s politicians are gutting human rights and environmental measures enacted by previous administrations to favor agribusiness, setting back years of conservation efforts.
Brazilian politician and environmentalist Marina Silva spoke to a UC Santa Barbara audience about saving the Amazon rainforest in a Zoom event hosted by the Department of Latin American and Iberian Studies.
As a result, the Amazon rainforest has seen increasing rates of deforestation since 2012, with more than 10,000 square kilometers – nearly 4,000 square miles – of the forest destroyed in 2020 alone.
“Brazil is living in a situation of complete disarticulation of social and environmental policies,” Silva said in a discussion hosted by the Latin American and Iberian Studies (LAIS) program earlier this month. “The government is retrograde, there are regressions that have been done in places that we had previously helped… Now we are walking backwards.”
She said the destruction of the Amazon threatens Brazil’s indigenous peoples and the world’s ecology, and urged individuals and nations to make the necessary changes toward sustainability for the Amazon and beyond.
The event’s co-planners, LAIS director Aline Ferreira and vice-director André Corrêa de Sá, said they organized the discussion with Silva to create awareness about the situation in the Amazon.
“The Amazon is crying and screaming for help and we would like to do something about it,” Ferreira said.
Recruiting Silva to speak was a powerful way to raise awareness, as she is one of Brazil’s leading political figures and an influential spokesperson on social and environmental issues.
“Marina Silva is someone who immediately stands out as someone internationally important and significant in terms of inspiring environmental engagement… she embodies all these concerns,” said Corrêa de Sá.
Stanford University scholar Manaira Aires Athayde interviewed Brazilian politician Marina Silva in Portuguese at the Department of Latin American and Iberian Studies event “How to Save the Amazon.”
During the Zoom event, Silva participated in a Q&A with Stanford University scholar Manaira Aires Athayde. The two spoke in Portuguese in the webinar, with a separate version available where Ferreira live-translated Silva’s words to English.
The discussion took place in Portuguese because Silva does not speak English. Though Ferreira and Corrêa de Sá admitted the live translation might deter English-speaking attendees, they felt it would allow Silva to get her point across in the most powerful way possible.
The lecture was planned and executed by LAIS but presented in collaboration with the Department of Spanish and Portuguese, the Environmental Studies Program, the Department of Global Studies, the Bren School of Environmental Science & Management, and the Interdisciplinary Humanities Center, which all provided funding to make it possible.
The broad interdisciplinary support for the talk showed the importance of the subject matter to humanity, the LAIS professors said.
Deforestation is terrifying for indigenous populations, who have called the Amazon home for generations, and for the entire world, which relies on the forest as a vital carbon store to slow global warming, the audience heard.
According to Silva, the Brazilian government headed by Jair Bolsonaro is mostly to blame. “It’s a government that has a negationist view,” she said. “They are in denial and they are denying our problems, especially those related to the environment. It’s an authoritarian, unilateral, vertical government.”
Brazilian environmentalist Marina Silva told an interdisciplinary UCSB audience that in order to preserve the Amazon rainforest, individuals must vote to enact sustainable change.
Indeed, Bolsonaro was elected on a campaign promising industrial development and his environmental minister Ricardo Salles set about deregulating the Amazon. The administration benefits from deforestation as it clears the way for agribusiness, mining, and lumber industries which profit from the land on which the Amazon sits.
Silva said in order to combat the social and environmental changes Bolsonaro’s government is making, citizens must use their democratic voting power to sway legislators. If the people do not take action, she said, then the government will continue on its current trajectory.
“People should be aware that when they’re voting, [they should] choose someone who they believe can help.”
The discussion with Marina Silva was the first in a series LAIS will host to draw attention to the Amazon. “The work we started with this event will follow very soon,” said Corrêa de Sá. Interested individuals should monitor LAIS and HFA social media to learn more about future events.
Colleen Coveney is a fourth-year UC Santa Barbara student majoring in Psychology and Brain Sciences. She is a Web and Social Media Intern for the Division of Humanities and Fine Arts.