An interview with Emanuela Evangelista, a biologist who has been living in the Brazilian Amazon for over twenty years and campaigning against deforestation.
"The Amazon is a biome that generates global benefits, but the problems and costs of protecting it cannot remain purely local. Everyone must play their part." For Emanuela Evangelista, an Italian biologist born in 1968 who has been living for around twenty years in the remote Brazilian village of Xixuaú, the preservation of the Amazon rainforest is something that concerns all of us — through our consumer choices and our activism, we can each play a role in the fight against the devastating deforestation that is afflicting the planet's main green lung, threatening to turn it into a savanna.
Evangelista has long been engaged in raising awareness of the Amazon and its biodiversity. In 2000, she moved to Xixuaú at the invitation of the National Institute for Research in the Amazon to study an aquatic mammal threatened with extinction about which very little was known at the time: the giant otter. From that research she went on to focus on the ecosystem as a whole, on local communities and on the conservation of the tropical forest, through Amazônia Onlus, of which she is president.
Named environmentalist of the year by Legambiente in 2009, in 2020 she was awarded the title of Officer of the Order of Merit of the Italian Republic by president Sergio Mattarella, "for her constant commitment, at international level, to environmental protection, the safeguarding of indigenous peoples and the fight against deforestation".
LifeGate reached her by phone for an interview to discuss the state of health of the Amazon rainforest, which is increasingly threatened by human activity.
Who is behind the deforestation process: is it purely a matter of large-scale exploitation from above, or is poverty in small rural villages also a factor?
Deforestation in the Amazon is tied to a market system, to demand both at national and international level. Forest areas are cleared to convert them into agricultural land, such as soy fields, or into extensive pastures for beef production. But it is also done to extract valuable timber and precious minerals. So there is deforestation linked to the export of meat, timber and minerals, but there is of course also a national component — which is not only local demand for products but also a necessity tied to economic development, since deforestation creates jobs.
"We should lock down the forests — meaning reach the famous zero-deforestation point today, not in ten years' time — and then reforest the areas that have been stripped."
— Emanuela Evangelista, Amazônia Onlus
In Brazil, the phenomenon is concentrated above all in what is known as the arc of deforestation, a belt to the south and east of the Amazon region. There, an entire urban population depends on the timber industry, mining and agriculture. Agricultural labour tends to be more specialised — it involves skilled workers who come mostly from southern Brazil — so it is not a source of income for traditional communities, for forest-dwellers. These people are usually displaced from the forest by the deforestation process, pushed towards more urban areas and excluded from development.
Those who live in the forest, in areas where it still exists, must nonetheless contend with poverty — a reality in small rural villages — which, however, does not usually lead to deforestation but rather to degradation: that is to say, the kind of poaching practised where there are no alternative sources of income, which causes the impoverishment of the forest.
What is the situation of so-called primary forest — the forest with the highest biodiversity — within the deforestation process?
Primary forest is severely threatened by cumulative deforestation. Since the 1970s, when Brazil's National Institute for Space Research began collecting data, the equivalent of twice the size of Germany has already been lost — that is, 18 per cent of the original cover. It is an extremely serious phenomenon because it has been ongoing for many years. In 2019 we lost 10,000 square kilometres of forest; last year the figure was 11,000. What is most worrying, however, is the cumulative figure, because cumulative deforestation of 20–30 per cent — compared to the current 18 per cent — would lead to a point of no return and to the transformation of the Amazon rainforest into a savanna. This would mean that the forest ecosystem would no longer be able to regulate its own climate, generate its own clouds and rainfall, and would consequently become a drier forest.
The most recent studies predict that, at the current rate of deforestation, this point of no return will be reached in 15–30 years. Once set in motion, the process is irreversible and will affect 60–70 per cent of the forest, including the so-called primary forest, while also releasing enormous quantities of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, with extremely serious consequences for everyone.
Who suffers most from Amazon deforestation at a local level, and what are the consequences for the planet?
Those who suffer most are the traditional inhabitants, the indigenous peoples — in short, the entire population of the Amazon region. Deforestation brings lawlessness, creates development for only a few and causes poverty for everyone else. In Brazil alone, we are talking about 25 million people who live in the Amazon region and depend on this ecosystem.
But southern Brazil also suffers from deforestation — a region that produces 70 per cent of national GDP, partly thanks to the rainfall generated by the Amazon rainforest itself, which is already declining. Without this rainfall, the region of São Paulo, Brazil's most industrialised area, would be desert, because it lies at the same latitude as the Chilean Atacama desert, Namibia and Australia. The Amazon, however, creates what are known as flying rivers — air currents that carry enormous quantities of water vapour towards southern Brazil and the rest of the world, driving precipitation and feeding the planet's water cycle.
"Deforestation brings lawlessness, creates development for only a few and causes poverty for everyone else."
— Emanuela Evangelista, Amazônia Onlus
Ultimately, then, it is the entire planet that suffers from deforestation, because the forest stabilises the global climate and is an enormous carbon sink that we cannot afford to release into the atmosphere. Moreover, we now know that forests protect us from possible new future pandemics; in Brazil we have sufficient data to say that wherever forest destruction occurs, there is a marked increase in cases of malaria, dengue and other infectious diseases. The destruction of the Amazon therefore also has health implications.
Up until ten years ago, the trend had been reversed, but from 2012 deforestation exploded again, with the situation definitively worsening under Bolsonaro. What can be done in the current context to change the state of affairs at a local level?
We should lock down the forests — in other words, reach the famous zero point of deforestation today, not in ten years' time, and then reforest the stripped areas as envisaged by the Paris Agreement. Another thing to do is certainly to increase the productivity of lands that have already been deforested for agricultural purposes, through the use of new technologies. Where cattle farming takes place, 63 per cent of the land dedicated to this use has only one head of cattle per hectare — extremely low productivity — and 23 per cent of deforested territory is abandoned. Today trees are still being felled pointlessly, at a loss, while the forest still has an enormous unexploited economic potential in its biodiversity.
When they burn or are lost, the thousands of species of animals and plants known to science or not yet catalogued reduce the availability of food, energy, medicinal and cultural resources. This is an economic damage, a loss of wealth that could instead create jobs and income for local populations. Through the use, trade and enhancement of forest products we can protect the forest and its riches while at the same time bringing sustainable development, in the form of bioeconomy and good practices.
With our non-profit organisation we generate income for indigenous people, but there are many others doing the same and delivering extremely interesting results, offering local communities greater earnings than classic soya plantations. I am referring, for example, to the harvesting of açaí, an energising berry that requires no deforestation; or to the Yanomami indigenous people, with whom we recently worked on the harvesting of the Brazil nut, a product of great economic potential, or who last year launched on the market a new line of chocolate made from native Yanomami cacao. In short, a different kind of development is possible — one that is not purely predatory.
What role can the international community and all of us play?
At the international level, the way forward is not to point the finger at a single defendant but for everyone to acknowledge their own responsibilities, including Italy, which imports meat, hides, soya and timber from Brazil. We are not always certain of the origin of these products; export supply chains are not transparent, so we can work, for example, on import mechanisms, on the rules governing the use of products from countries at risk of deforestation.
The Amazon is a biome that generates global benefits, but the problems and costs of protecting it cannot remain solely local; the individual global citizen can also play their part and become a more conscious consumer. It is sometimes a complex process, but it is necessary to understand where what we consume comes from and what consequences it has, whether we need to change our habits, buy less and in a more informed way. This makes it possible to transform the market as consumers and even more so as investors, influencing the behaviour of financial institutions — and therefore of the capital that goes towards subsidising the destruction of the forest.
