If we have fulfilled the promise
of equality by our mighty arms,
in thy bosom, O freedom,
our brave breast shall defy death itself!
of equality by our mighty arms,
in thy bosom, O freedom,
our brave breast shall defy death itself!
-- Brazilian National Anthem
The town of Coari, along the Solimões river in the state of Amazonas, is suffering from the shock of development and causing a great deal of controversy with the building of the pipeline to carry natural gas from the Urucu basin to Manaus. In the bars of this city where one finds the men at the end of the day, the talk is not about Coari’s soccer team the Grêmio Coariense, but about oil and the Urucu pipeline.
It is not different at the table where three friends are entertaining an engineer from Manaus. The discussion has been about the good and the harm caused by rapid progress. Rodrigo, the most talkative, disagreed with the engineer when the engineer said that the gas pipeline was the best thing to ever have taken place in Coari, that even the current president Lula da Silva declared that “progress is irreversible, that Amazonia could no longer be considered untouchable but allowed to produce benefits for both the Amazon’s inhabitants and for the nation as a whole.”
Rodrigo understood but passionately disagreed: “I understand, but I do not accept that the people of Coari should be forced to carry all the cost of this development on their backs! Look around, six years ago, Coari had less than 70,000 inhabitants. Do you know how many are there now? More than 85,000. Is the town prepared for this influx? Does it have the sewers, schools, and doctors to take care of all these people? The number of people increases but the available public services continue at the same level as before!”
“Calm down Rodrigo, watch your heart!” said someone coming to the table and toasting Rodrigo.
“Look who’s here! My friend the seringuiero (rubber tapper) Edmilson. He knows Amazon like the back of his hand! Sit down over here, among your friends!” replied Rodrigo.
The seringuiero humbly accepted the invitation and entered the conversation. He has some very strong opinions about the Amazon: “Look, the worst thing to do is to think in absolutes. It’s either everything or nothing, either eight or eighty. Where would one put 40 or 44 or 50? I believe that people need to see everything very dispassionately and with a large dose of common sense. The Portuguese arrived in Brazil and brought over here a European culture and technology. Was this good? Of course it was. Did they clear the coasts to build villages? Yes, they did. They almost completely destroyed the forest along the Atlantic, and this was a mistake but no one complained.
“The whole world was deforesting at the time and no one imagined that the forests were needed for humanity’s survival on our planet. Now pretty much all that is left of the forests is in the Amazon and it does not make sense to cut it down as well. Paciência! (Let’s take it easy, slowdown). The world needs to breathe, Brazil as well. So we need to find a means to utilize all the resources of Amazonia for the benefit of its inhabitants and of Brazil as a whole, without destroying it. We’ll use the oil, gas, minerals, and water – one day the water will be more valuable than the oil – but we’ll save the forest, one day we’ll stop with the derrumbadas (clear-cutting) of the forest.
In contrast to Rodrigo, the seringueiro spoke firmly without raising his voice and even spoke with a smile on his face. Rodrigo agreed with him, as did the engineer.
The youngest in the group was Sodré who was from a family of fazendeiros (big-time farmers or ranchers) and thought that the seringueiro contradicted himself, “Sir, are you really being radical by saying that one day we’ll end the deforestation? This isn’t ‘eight or eighty?’ Amazonia has 520 million hectares – how will my 50,000 hectares make a difference?”
Edmilson didn’t respond. Instead, he turned to the waitor and said, “bring me a deck of cards, a new one.”
He skillfully took out the deck and began to build a house of cards. Everyone looked perplexed but did not say anything. They only wanted to see where he was going with this. Having set up the house, he asked the young man, “Ok, now pull out a card, any card, from below, from the middle or from the top.” The fazendiero did not accept the challenge: “Any one that I pull will bring down the house, right?”
“Exactly, young man.” The seringueiro simply poked the card at the top and the house of cards came down as expected. He continued, “An ecosystem is like a house of cards as well. You take away one element of it, and the rest goes down. Last year I went as far as the lands of the Katukinas (an indigenous tribe living in the Amazon) along headwaters of the Gregorio River. And do you know why? Because I heard in Seringal Guanabara (the rubber tree laden forest of Guanabara) that the Manchineris (another indigenous tribe) used to cure themselves of everything from panema (sluggishness) and desânimo (depression) to stomach ailments with a potion made taken from the sapo kampô (an Amazonian toad) and the sapo has disappeared from their lands.
“So I went all the way to the lands of the Katukinas where they still find the sapo kampô in order to see how it once was. To make a long story short, I made a potion there in order to test it, and the effect was immediate. I felt a heat passing through my whole body, I felt sick, vomited for twenty minutes without stopping and then I passed out. However, the sensation that has remained with me is that of a body that feels lighter and cleaner. And I haven’t suffered from depression since. Never.”
“What happened in Seringal Guanabara is happening across all of Amazonia. People are pulling out a card – only one card – and wish that the house remains the same. Nothing stays the same. Once the forest’s cut down for farming or pasture that which was unique about the place never returns to what it once was.
“The house of cards which is the Amazonian ecosystem was formed over millions of years. Every worm, every insect, every animal or plant is a link in the chain. If one disappears, the chain, the house as it were, changes. Today, Amazonia is the richest forest ecosystem in the world. No other place has the variety of medicinal plants that laboratories need to make pharmaceutical drugs. Everything still remains practically virgin waiting to be discovered, analyzed and applied to the benefit of all humanity, and it is ours.”
The engineer listened with greater attention. He went back to the comment about the toad (sapo kampô): “But if I remember, the potion made from the sapo is in fact, a type of psychotropic drug used by the indigenous peoples, no?”
“I believe that it is that also, but scientists are taking very seriously the reports that they have received. They’ve already identified the secret of the sapo kampô; that this little, amiable animal, has antibiotic properties that strengthen the immunological system and contains two principal chemical agents: dermorphin, a powerful painkiller, and deltorphin used in the treatment of ischaemia (poor blood circulation).
Rodrigo added in a joking tone: “So, I hear that there’s even a cure for panema (sluggishness), and bet that there’s one for love as well. As the Indians say, ‘as goes the hunt, so it goes with women, and no one knows why!’”
“That’s completely true!” agreed the seringueiro with a smile. He continued, “There are many approaches to development which don’t require the destruction of anything. Nature gave us the forest for us to use for our benefit. It wasn’t made to be transformed into a carnival or into pastures. Between eight and eighty we need to find forty-four. And there are many forty-fours that people can use to develop and make better living conditions for all.”
Edmilson paused. When no one spoke, he realized that he had created a certain disquiet. No problem, that he could change. What was important to him was that he had planted an idea in the head of everyone present.
“But, did we come here to debate or or to celebrate Grêmio Coariense’s victory yesterday?
The Sapo Kampô
The Amazonian toad called the kampô is an excellent and precarious symbol of our biodiversity. Due to its fragile bodily structure the sapo kampô -- a fantastic repository of beneficial properties just waiting to be discovered – is unable to resist the effects of uncontrolled deforestation whose only motivation is immediate profit.
The world needs to take global warming seriously
Humanity still does not understand its journey. We all think that Nature has an infinite capacity to regenerate itself. If one cuts down a tree over here, Nature will produce another tree over there. Every year, when summer comes to an end, autumn begins, then winter, then spring and then summer again, continuing a cycle that does not change. The sun is reborn each day, in order to warm us once more. The water that we consume returns anew in the form of vapor, showering down on us afterwards as rain. Fish and game reproduce continually. We wonder: it was always like this, always the same, why should it change?
The problem is not that it was always the same. The problem is that it is changing now. Nature has given us repeated indications that it can’t endure the mistreatment that we give it, and that it can’t take responsibility for the world by itself. A good part of that responsibility falls on us.
It’s that simple! It’s only that we don’t see it because we don’t want to see it. It has been already thirty years since the United Nations declared ecology and the environment, that is, respect for Nature, to be issues of the greatest priority. (And with this, the environment and ecology had been added to the other three great priorities of the United Nations – along with peace, respect for human rights and development with equality). But the problem has been pushed around by both governments and those who are governed as if this problem of Mother Nature did not exist: “She will always find a way get by.”
Up until now, the earth has been covered by an ozone layer, a gas that exists in very small quantities, that absorbs in the stratosphere, the majority of the ultraviolet radiation received from the sun. If it reached our planet’s surface, this radiation would be fatal, because it causes genetic mutations. On the other hand, various other gases, also existing in small quantities – hydrocarbons, methane, nitrous oxide, and even water vapor – have the property of holding back a good part of the heat being radiated from the earth’s surface, thus maintaining an average temperature of about 15 C (or 59 F). It’s called the “greenhouse effect.” If not for this natural effect, the earth’s average surface temperature would be -18 C (0 F) at which all water would be frozen and life as we know it would be impossible. In 1977, a hole in the Ozone layer was found at the South Pole. By the middle of the 1980s, it could be seen that this hole had measurably increased.
At the same time in the last decades, a worrisome increase in the the earth’s median temperature has has been observed. It’s believed that the principal reason for this increase have been gases produced by human activity. These include carbon dioxide produced as a result of combustion of fossil fuels (coal, oil and natural gas and deforestration), methane, nitrous oxide and chloroflorocarbons used in the past for refrigeration and as aerosols. These have been released into the atmosphere, changing the equilibrium that has existed as a result of the natural green house effect.
During the last thirty years, little has been done. Alarmed by this problem, at the beginning of 2007, the scientific community, organized by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), published an extensive report on the global flooding and climate change, warning of grave consequences if people, businesses and governments do not unite immediately in defense of our planet. The report is clear, it describes a tumultuous scene. Beginning already this century the poles would melt as a result of global warming on account of the greenhouse effect. Further, the thermal expansion of the oceans would raise the level of the oceans and flooding coastal regions and islands. Precipitation would decrease; potable water would become scarce as well; tropical forests would give way to poor steppes; and steppes would become deserts. These effects would combine to produce famine, malnutrition, and epidemics of malaria effecting tens of millions of people, if nothing is done now.
Amazonia has the richest diversity of tropical flora and fauna in the world. On one hand the burning of the forests makes it partly responsible for the change in the greenhouse effect. On the other hand, Amazonia plays an important stabilizing role. It is the largest area of continuous forest, tirelessly performing the task of removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.
To deforest the Amazon would result in a reduction in the ability of the forest to do its work. Moreover, deforestation has the still greater effect. By altering the ecological equilibrium of the region, changes the food chain, changes the water cycle and threatens entire species of birds and animals with extinction. In fighting against deforestration, the Amazonians know that they are fighting for the preservation of life.
Dreaded panema (sluggishness).
A widely held superstition among the seringueiros is the fear of falling into a state of panema or sluggishness. When this happens, the person no longer finds the energy to hunt, even if the prey is only two paces away. And when he does find the energy, he’s unable to aim correctly and misses. This is a terrible state for a hunter to find oneself in as he may spend a long time without having any meat to eat.
To avoid panema, hunters have to take innumerable precautions. For example, they should not offer meat from game to the envious because they may play with the bones of the animals in private, which they believe is a major cause of panema. Neither may they allow pregnant or menstruating women to eat their game.
Panema is cured by bathing, fumigation and complicated recipes involving teas.
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